Valve introduced three new gadgets in the present day: Steam Body, the brand new Steam Machine, and the brand new Steam Controller. However the place’s the Steam Deck 2?
That’s a query we put to Valve software program engineer Pierre-Loup Griffais in a new interview on the firm’s workplace forward of in the present day’s huge reveal. He replied to clarify that Valve does certainly plan to launch an upgraded model of its handheld sooner or later, but it surely’s ready for the know-how that may let it make a sufficiently big efficiency bounce to justify its existence whereas sustaining a affordable battery life.
“Clearly the Steam Deck’s not our focus in the present day, however the identical issues we have mentioned previously the place we’re actually to work on what’s subsequent for Steam Deck… the factor we’re ensuring of is that it is a worthwhile sufficient efficiency improve to make sense as a standalone product,” Griffais defined.
“We’re not excited by getting to a level the place it is 20 or 30 and even 50% extra efficiency on the similar battery life. We would like one thing a little bit extra demarcated than that. So we have been working again from silicon developments and architectural enhancements, and I believe now we have a fairly good thought of what the following model of Steam Deck goes to be, however proper now there is not any choices in that panorama, within the SoC [System on a Chip] panorama, that we predict would really be a next-gen efficiency Steam Deck.”
Griffais’ feedback would possibly come as a disappointment to some given the capabilities of the getting old Steam Deck. The hand-held launched in February 2022, with the OLED mannequin popping out November 2023. Steam Deck will quickly be 4 years outdated, and whereas there’s a lengthy listing of Steam Deck-verified video games to play, it does wrestle to run some fashionable PC video games properly. Certainly, in September 2023, Pierre-Loup Griffais instructed The Verge that the following Steam Deck was at the very least a couple of years away, which had some hoping for the following model in time for the vacations this yr. Clearly, that will not occur.
Based mostly on Griffais’ feedback, the sticking level with a Steam Deck 2 is battery life, and you may see why. As IGN’s Steam Deck overview factors out, battery life is a “large downside” whereas working Home windows. Even when working the native SteamOS on the machine, we famous “battery life nonetheless wasn’t nice,” citing the truth that God of Battle on default settings chewed by means of a totally charged Steam Deck in simply 90 minutes.
Nonetheless, there’s a lot extra for Valve {hardware} followers to sink their tooth into. The aforementioned Steam Body, and next-gen Steam Machine and Steam Controller are coming and we’ve bought hundreds of unique content material for them, which you’ll try in our useful roundup. In the meantime, right here’s what we wish to see from the Steam Deck 2.
Wesley is Director, Information at IGN. Discover him on Twitter at @wyp100. You possibly can attain Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.