We’re Years Away From A Better Steam Deck

Steam Deck designer Pierre-Loup Griffais told CNBC at the Tokyo Game Show that the portable PC won’t get a meaningful hardware refresh for at least “a couple years.”

Distributor Valve thinks the Deck is in a “pretty sweet spot,” Griffais said, “in terms of being able to play all the experiences from this new generation [of games], and, you know, so far, the new releases are […] great experiences on Steam Deck.” Resource-heavy Starfield kind of crushes its spine, though.

To The Verge, Griffais clarified that a Steam Deck successor wouldn’t release until at least 2025, putting a Steam Deck 2 more or less on the same timeline as something like the elusive Switch 2, which likely wouldn’t release until 2024 or later. Kotaku reached out to Valve for comment.

“Changing the performance level is not something we are taking lightly, and we only want to do so when there is a significant enough increase to be had,” Griffais said to The Verge.

And, anyway, Griffais feels that the current Deck—an impressive machine by all counts—is holding itself gracefully amid competition like the Switch or Android-based Ayn Odin.

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Buy The Steam Deck: GameStop

Sales have been steady even after covid’s (relative) decline, and Valve is routinely releasing software updates. “We’ve done a lot of work on Steam[‘s operating system, which powers the Deck],” Griffais said to CNBC. He’s also happy to recognize that “the power and strength of PC is that there’s a diversity of options. […] I think it’s great that all these other manufacturers are also participating [in creating portable consoles] […]. If they succeed, we succeed.”

While the specifics of a Steam Deck 2 are unknown even to its manufacturer, Griffais more or less confirms that trendy attention on VR, like that which Mark Zuckerberg is beaming into the Meta Quest 2, probably won’t ever pair with Steam Deck.

“We don’t really have a VR story to [the Deck],” Griffais said to CNBC, “but [VR is] definitely something we want to explore more in the future.”