Steam Deck 2 release date is still unknown, and so is almost everything else
Valve says Steam Deck 2 is still in development, but the company is not ready to announce a release window.
Valve has had a major effect on PC gaming in the handheld form factor. Its work on Proton and power optimization helped the first-generation Steam Deck remain competitive more than four years after launch. With that milestone now passed, the obvious question is what comes next. Valve may already be laying the groundwork for a new handheld, but the company also appears committed to a long support cycle with smaller updates between major hardware releases.
Steam Deck has already received faster memory and an OLED screen, but it has not received a new APU. The OLED model uses a smaller process node, but GPU performance remains in the same class as the original device. Valve has not shared any official GPU upgrade details for Steam Deck 2. The company says it is waiting for a larger performance jump , but not in FPS alone. Valve wants that gain at the same battery life, which suggests frame generation is not the answer it is looking for.
In a new IGN interview, Valve programmer Pierre-Loup Griffais said the company is “hard at work” on the next Steam Deck. He added that Valve’s current hardware projects, including Steam Machine, Steam Controller and Steam Frame, are feeding into the development of the next handheld.
“We’re hard at work on it. And obviously every step of the way, if you look at our hardware projects over the years, you can draw a straight line from the original Steam Controller and Steam Machine to Steam Deck, to everything that we’re announcing and shipping this year. And we expect Steam Deck 2 will be a lot of the same where a lot of what we’re doing here will be learnings that build up to it.”
— Pierre-Loup Griffais, Valve
The comment follows Valve’s previous explanation that Steam Deck 2 would not ship as a minor refresh. Griffais said last year that Valve was not interested in launching a new Deck with only 20%, 30% or even 50% more performance at the same battery life. The company wants a larger generational jump before it replaces the current model.
Van Gogh Custom APU (Zen2/RDNA2), Source: Valve
Valve launched the original Steam Deck in February 2022, followed by Steam Deck OLED in November 2023. The OLED model improved the display, battery life, thermals, and wireless connectivity, but it kept the same architecture, based on AMD RDNA2 by the way, something even AMD is forgetting about these days. Valve has since said that the next model depends on SoC progress rather than a fixed calendar target. So RDNA5 perhaps? One does not work in the design without knowing how the chip looks like, unless they are literally working on an outer shell only.
Source: IGN
