Valve still waiting on a 'generational leap' for Steam Deck 2 - but it's coming
Valve still waiting on a 'generational leap' for Steam Deck 2 - but it's coming
Valve gave us the strongest wording yet that a Steam Deck 2 is actually real, although it's still clearly going to be some time away before there's enough of an upgrade.
The exact quote:
It is important to us, and we’ve tried to be really clear, we are not doing the yearly cadence. We’re not going to do a bump every year. There’s no reason to do that. And, honestly, from our perspective, that’s kind of not really fair to your customers to come out with something so soon that’s only incrementally better. So we really do want to wait for a generational leap in compute without sacrificing battery life before we ship the real second generation of Steam Deck. But it is something that we’re excited about and we’re working on.
My biggest concern with SteamDeck was that it would become a 1-2 year upgrade cycle device. I don’t expect the hardware to last 7+ years like normal console lifecycles but I’m very glad to hear they’re being patient and aggressively supporting the software side.
It's kind of just becoming an indie or old game portable pc to me. Don't personally have much interest in playing modern graphically demanding titles on it.
I'm the same. I play retro and indie titles on the Deck, and more modern and demanding games on the desktop.
I was really surprised how well Hellblade 2 ran on mine. And supposedly Until Dawn also runs well now. When you can live with 30fps I suspect that well crafted games will be playable for a few more years.
It's an excellent thin client as well. I've played the second half of death stranding through the free tier of Geforce Now.
I dunno, I expect the Deck to last far longer than the average console if anything. It's a PC, so the games are pretty much guaranteed to keep coming for decades to come, as they have for decades past.
The hardware will fall behind, so I think the point where the newest Triple A games won't be playable will come within a few years, but I bet whatever visual novels or pixelated indie games release in 2035 will still run just fine on it.
Plus, it's designed to be repairable, unlike most consoles. And even if Valve stops maintaining SteamOS for the Steam Deck, you'll still be able to install other distros, so software support isn't something I'm very concerned about either.
Two thoughts.
- Space marine 2 didn't work well so I'm assuming that spankin new games will be hit or miss from here on out.
- AAA games have sucked lately. ive played so many good games on my deck that I may have missed on a larger system.
Shoot. My back log on games is so big, I can be happy with this one for another 5 years before I'd need something with more power.
There are a ton of PC gamers who think the only way to play a video game is 1440p 60-144fps and anything below that is unplayable. The reality is the steam deck is a 720p 30fps handheld device that can occasionally make it to 60fps if pushed far enough.
IMHO a device that can run a game like God of war Ragnarok at 30fps in handheld mode and still play fine when docked is succeeding on the performance front in several aspects. In comparison, the switch version of Wolfenstein the new Colossus had to remove entire sets of geometry to even hit 30fps where the deck can hit that easily with the same settings without removing geometry and using AMD FSR. I think the deck has at least 3 more years in it before we even start to see any needed upgrades at that performance. Only time will tell.
Yeah, this is my take at it as well. Sure, your big beefy PC looks better, but can you play CP2077 at 30,000 feet on a transatlantic flight? Because I have!
Performance could definitely be better. It would be great if the deck could reliably push 720p 60fps all the time, and maybe some day we'll get there. But for the moment my deck can push most of the games I throw at it to at least 40 fps, and it can hold 45 decently enough, and that's good enough for me.
I play during lunch at work, when I go shopping with the wife, family holiday when nothing is going on, busses, waiting for Dr. appointments, the train, all kinds of places. My steam deck opened up gaming to me by making it available in small pockets of otherwise unused time.
Yes but that 1440p 144hz is on a 27 inch display on a stationary computer. Why do you think people that prefer that are mutually exclusive with people that are fine with less for a mobile device with a 7 inch display and a battery?
It 100% could, everyone thinks they need to be able to generate kratos' abs, Cloud's spikes and Keanu....but they don't. (Removed an extra an)
Agreed. FSR 3 really is amazing and I'd gladly use that to pull a few more years of playing my favorite games on 720p low.
Upscalers are great for portables I just hope it's not used to excuse poor optimization.
That said I only play fps on my desktop, the steam deck opens up an entirely different class of games for me.
Honestly can't see that happening. I think valve will want each upgrade to be significant enough you can feel it
Good. Keeping it the same means that the original Steam Deck will remain a target device for game developers for longer.
A desperately needed view in an industry of fashionable e-waste. Apple, Google and now Microsoft: I'm looking at you
Number must go up
Presumably this will mean a high-performance ARM CPU (comparable to the Apple M series), along with the dynamic recompilation technology Steam have been experimenting with. (It’s unlikely that Intel or AMD will deliver the generational leap they’re talking about.)
This reminds me of an old thread on a random forum. Just when Sims 2 was released they were speculating what Sims 3 would look like.
Someone suggested that the next game will surely be in the source engine!
While your point is more realistic than that I still don't think valve could pull this off in reasonable time. Translation for games is extremely hard to do right. I think if at all there will be another generation of decks before we see something like this.
I wouldn't count AMD out. The whole reason the Steam Deck is so successful is because of AMDs Mobile GPU, not necessarily it's CPU. AMD has been able to make some very efficient GPUs lately, so I do belive with a couple new architectures and die shrinks we will get the generational leap they're talking about.
ARM sounds nice, and it might one day be, but getting x86 translation working flawlessly WITHOUT performance/battery costs at the same time as proton is just asking a heck of a lot.
ARM does best when it's doing ARM things. Since all games are built for x86 with nobody having any intention of compiling for native ARM, I don't really see the point. The whole reason i like the Steam Deck is to play older back catalog games, and those are all x86. Apple pulls it off because they only translate x86 when they have to.
Dynamic recompilation technology?
It's "FEX", Valve have apparently been testing it with Proton.
The Asahi Linux team have their own packaging/tooling around it, but theirs is slower at runtime because they have to run the games inside a VM as well.
I think we'll get at least one more x86 Steam Deck generation before it moves to ARM (if it moves to ARM at all).
The Snapdragon X isn't anything to write home about when it comes to efficiency under load, with the newest CPUs (with iGPUs) from AMD and Intel keeping up or maybe even exceeding it.
I honestly think (hope) valve should take a shot at a genuine console. I would absolutely love something that just WORKS like steam deck, but unlike my PS5 syncs with my steam library and can easily transition to my deck with no fuss. Library compatibility, graphic customization, capable of functioning as a one stop media device for the TV room. I feel like the steam machines were too early and too short sighted/compartmentalized, but now that so many games are coming to PC, valve could take everything the PlayStation 5 did right, while removing all the bullshit that drives people nuts.
A new take on the Steam Machine could potentially knock Xbox out of the market in their current state, and I'm okay with that.
Steam machines were a great idea that the market wasn't quite ready for, and were too niche at the time. The steam deck has proved people of all technical levels are ready and willing to embrace a non-windows OS, and don't care what it is as long as it can easily give them access to their content. I have an Nvidia shield, a PS5, a steam deck and a desktop PC. My game library is disjointed and I rarely play anything on the PC, because there is no good way to make it convenient. The vast majority of the time I use my steam deck, I'm sitting on my couch, just like my PS5 .
A steam console could unify everything, cut my devices while simplifying my experience and giving me way more control over the invasive bullshit that comes with streaming and android devices. That has so much upside and value to me, it's hard to even put a price tag on it tbh.
But why limit this to console only, when this will be a full featured PC that can do so much more. Plus there are plenty of open source streaming tools like Moonlight and sunshine that can stream your game directly to your TV. You have Jellyfin for media streaming etc.
Because I don't need or want it to do any of that, nor do most people that purchase a console. I want it to be a steam-friendly PS5 replacement, and serve the exact role that a console serves. A steam-friendly replacement would have the same OS features that deck has, and allow a similar degree of customization. You are not the use case if you don't understand that.
I just sold my 4090 after playing some latest hit AAA games I didn’t like at all and I play only indies on deck, it’s the best gaming device ever
Also it seems the only games I liked from hundreds of aaa graphics eye candies from recent years are rdr2 and cyberpunk and bg3. I unironically think there are fewer great big aaa games nowadays cmv and I am not planning another xx90 card any time soon
I’d like to get a Steam Deck but was wondering if it’s getting close to a newer, better version coming soon. This makes me feel more comfortable, not that I have the budget for one right now anyway.
It would be a real shame that they moved onto the next big thing while the Steam Deck is not even widely available.
It's not what makes them money so they don't really have the business incentive for maximizing hardware sales that leads to a relentless pushing out of new versions of their hardware that are barely better than the last one and all manner of tricks for early obsolescence of older devices (things like purposeful OS and App under-performance and even incompatibility with older versions of the hardware).
Also in the big picture of gaming the Steam Deck is tiny and in its early stages, so business-wise is not the time to go down a strategy of relentless new hardware versions and enshittification, quite the opposite.
Absolutely, they're doing the right thing and as the right thing aligns with their business objectives it's a bit wishful thinking to claim its because they care so much about their customers as people.
Might sound kind of stupid, but one thing I'd personally love for the steam deck would be the ability to detach the display from the controls on each side like the Nintendo switch so I could use it like a small tablet in portrait mode. You can already do that, but it's awkward and bulky.
I'd actually use it for browsing the web on desktop mode and I could probably get rid of my android tablet.
Nah. One big piece let's them fit more excellent inside.
Can you use an external controller, and a stand of some kind?
I honestly hope they wait as long as possible. I want the leap to be a huge difference for a steam deck 2.
Understandable.
What I will say though is that I personally wouldn't mind regular spec bumps at all. The Deck isn't exactly a cheap device and to get the "latest and greatest" for your "investment" at any given point of purchase would help longevity.
But as I said, in this case it makes a lot of sense (for Valve). SteamOS is still under heavy development, even more basic stuff such as the update mechanism and also power management is something they're still working to improve.
They also use a custom APU designed in collaboration with AMD, and these designs cost a lot of money. It's not just a rebranded 7840U like the Z1 Extreme for example. This custom design makes a lot of sense in terms of focusing on gaming performance and efficiency, and it clearly shows in (very) power limited scenarios.
Either way, I wouldn't be surprised if we see a new Steam Deck based on Zen 5 and RDNA 4 with another custom designed APU sometime in 2025 or early 2026. Zen 2 is really starting to show its age and Zen 5 is a solid leap even over Zen 4 (not talking about desktop CPUs here, but Ryzen AI 300). RDNA 4 will likely improve quite a bit over RDNA 3(.5) (with the current Deck having RDNA 2) and include some type of hardware-accelerated machine learning upscaling with FSR4, which could make a lot of sense on the Deck as long as enough games support it.
I'd also like to see a few other improvements. The OLED display is great in many aspects, but VRR would be a great feature to have. Internally I'd like to see an easier way to swap the battery, maybe using similar tech to what Apple does with the iPhone 16's battery. Currently, swapping the battery is one of the most complex repairs on the Deck, but it'll also be the most common a few years down the line when all these batteries really start to show their age.
Currently, swapping the battery is one of the most complex repairs on the Deck,
Is it really? I know there's some glue holding the battery itself, but otherwise my understanding is that the battery is really easy to access.
iFixit rates it "Difficult" for the Steam Deck OLED and says the time required is 2-3 hours:
https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Steam+Deck+OLED+Battery+Replacement/168676
This is a slight improvement from the original Deck's estimated 2-4 hours:
https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Steam+Deck+Battery+Replacement/149070
It requires removing quite a few parts but the most annoying part is getting rid of the adhesive. It doesn't have easy-to-access pull tabs or whatever.
They can certainly improve this. Either add pull tabs to the adhesive strips, or better yet use the mechanism from the iPhone 16 where you apply voltage to the adhesive to make dissolve/no longer stick. Or even better make it a screw-in battery without any glue whatsoever. Then update the routing of several cables so they aren't in the way of removing the battery.