Valve Won't Follow Yearly Release Cadence with Steam Deck, Holds Until "Generational Leap in Compute"

In an interview with Reviews.org, Valve's designers Lawrence Yang and Yazan Aldehayyat, who worked on Steam Deck, talked about console's future and confirmed that the handheld will not follow a yearly release cadence that most handheld console makers do. Usually, makers of handheld PCs and gaming consoles like ASUS with its ROG Ally, GPD with its Pocket, Lenovo with Legion GO, and many others follow a yearly update structure of its products to put the latest and greatest chipsets to power their products. However, Valve is taking a more conservative approach to updating its famous Steam Deck console.

"We're not going to do a bump every year," said Lawrence Yang, adding that "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." The infamous successor to the original Steam Deck, Steam Deck 2, is currently shrouded in mystery. We don't have much information about the hardware that will power it, nor is there a release date. However, as Valve notes, it will be a "generational leap in compute" bringing more gaming capability to the platform. With many competitors releasing handheld gaming consoles, we are expecting Valve to come with a new console soon.