Valve revealed three new hardware products on November 12 with the Steam Frame, a new Steam Machine, and a new Steam Controller… leaving fans wondering about the next iteration of the Steam Deck.
The company has confirmed yet again that a next-generation Steam Deck is planned, but current chip options are not advanced enough to deliver the jump in performance it wants while keeping battery life in a reasonable range.
The update came during an IGN interview with Valve software engineer Pierre-Loup Griffais conducted at the company’s office ahead of the announcement. Griffais reiterated that Valve intends to release a more powerful handheld only when the technology exists to justify a true upgrade.
He said Valve is tracking upcoming silicon and architectural improvements, but nothing on the market right now fits the target performance and battery profile needed for what it considers a proper Steam Deck successor.
Valve says it needs a bigger leap in power before moving forward
“We’re not interested in getting to a point where it’s 20 or 30 or even 50% more performance at the same battery life,” he told the publication.
“We want something a little bit more demarcated than that. So we’ve been working back from silicon advancements and architectural improvements, and I think we have a pretty good idea of what the next version of Steam Deck is going to be, but right now there are no offerings in that landscape that we think would truly be a next-gen performance Steam Deck.”
The current Steam Deck launched in February 2022, followed by the OLED model in November 2023. The device is approaching four years on the market and, while supported by a large library of Steam Deck-verified games, its hardware struggles with some newer PC titles.
This isn’t the first time Valve has commented on the Steam Deck 2, either. They told Dexerto back in November 2024 that the successor was coming, but power and battery life were holding it back, and that sentiment hasn’t changed since.
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