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Valve has shared some new information about the progress being made with the Steam Deck 2 – including better battery life – and further expressed a desire to make a Steam Controller 2.
Valve has made no secret of the fact that there will be a sequel to the Steam Deck – indeed, multiple iterations of the portable gaming PC – and in an interview with The edge (opens in new tab)Steam Deck designers Lawrence Yang and Pierre-Loup Griffais talked about some priorities for Steam Deck 2.
When asked about the main bottlenecks to be solved with the next incarnation of the handheld, both answered that they were longer battery life and an improvement in the screen.
What about faster performance and smoother frame rates? Apparently this isn’t in the cards, as Griffais told The Verge, “Right now all Steam Decks can play the same games and that we have one goal for users to understand what kind of performance level they can expect when you play and for developers to understand what to focus on… there is a lot of value in having that one specification.”
He added: “I think we will choose to keep the one level of performance for a bit longer and only look at changing the level of performance when there is a significant gain to be had.”
As we mentioned at the beginning, the subject of a Steam Controller sequel came up, and Yang chimed in, “Yes, we want to make it happen. It’s just a question of how and when.”
So there will be sequels on both hardware, although Steam Deck 2 is clearly the focus for Valve – but the Steam Controller 2 will be something that will likely be explored, Yang notes.
Valve’s employees also make great efforts that the company puts into making games run well on the Steam Deck and fixing issues such as fixing stuttering with Elden Ring. Apparently, Valve spent about six months getting Halo Infinite up and running, including implementing new Vulkan features to get the game supported; impressive lengths indeed.
Attempting to make games with handheld-compatible anti-cheating systems is another area of focus, and the engineers noted that Halo: The Master Chief Collection and Fall Guys are a few examples of games that are actively being worked on and should be addressed. playable on the deck (eventually).
Analysis: Strengthening the battery would obviously be a great boon
When it comes to the Steam Deck 2, battery life is an obvious goal to shoot for. Obviously, any portable computer literally lives and dies by battery life, which can be particularly problematic for demanding games – so getting a decent amount of extra life will be a big step forward. Of course, a better screen is another obvious goal that will make a big difference to the overall portable gaming experience.
It’s interesting to hear that boosting performance is seemingly off the table for Steam Deck 2, though it’s clearly something that will happen in future iterations. Be that as it may, while it may be tempting to imagine that a smaller-than-expected bump for the sequel could mean Steam Deck 2 is closer than expected, that’s probably not the case. It’s probably a long way to go to give Steam Deck buyers enough breathing space to enjoy their purchases (and don’t forget that Valve struggled to supply all those people as it was).
The comment about working on new Vulkan features for Halo Infinite is also very illuminating, and an even more striking excerpt comes elsewhere in the interview. Namely, that Valve “directly pays more than 100 open source developers” who work on Proton, Vulkan, the Mesa graphics driver, and more. Serious stuff.
As for the Steam Controller 2, that prospect – vague as it may seem in this entry – has been greeted with enthusiasm in some circles, as there are certainly fans of the original controller, while also raising questions about, well, why would you bother you? Considering the original was canned and a lot of remaining stock was more or less given away in 2019. We’ll have to keep our eyes peeled for more news on this as we’re certainly intrigued to see if this is actually something Valve could pursue .