Friday, September 22nd 2023
Valve Not Rushing Out Steam Deck 2
Valve has not kept the prospect of a Steam Deck successor very secret—their Proton-based handheld gaming system will eventually become a "multi-generational product." Gabe Newell (going back to early 2022) outlined some initial ambitions for the second iteration, with a teaser: "what are the capabilities that mobile gives us, above and beyond what you would get in a traditional desktop or laptop gaming environment?" One of the project's main architects, Pierre-Loup Griffais, has discussed the prospect of a "Steam Deck 2" with The Verge and CNBC—his team's progress hinges on striking an optimal balance between performance and power efficiency (on battery). The follow-up is not arriving any time soon, despite rival companies preparing alternative portable gaming experiences—Griffais said: "I don't anticipate such a leap to be possible in the next couple of years."
Steam Deck, in its current form, seems to be the main priority for the immediate future. Griffais was a keynote speaker at Tokyo Game Show 2023, so communicated with Verge via email: "It's important to us that the Deck offers a fixed performance target for developers, and that the message to customers is simple, where every Deck can play the same games. As such, 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...but we're still closely monitoring innovations in architectures and fabrication processes to see where things are going." Griffais re-confirmed this stance in an interview with CNBC (at TGS 2023)—Valve wants more gamers to adopt the platform before a push into next-gen—with improved user interfaces, more development partners and an ironing out of supply chain issues: "We're looking at this performance target that we have as a stable target for a couple years."
Sources:
PC Gamer, Tom's Hardware, Pierre-Loup Griffais, The Verge
Steam Deck, in its current form, seems to be the main priority for the immediate future. Griffais was a keynote speaker at Tokyo Game Show 2023, so communicated with Verge via email: "It's important to us that the Deck offers a fixed performance target for developers, and that the message to customers is simple, where every Deck can play the same games. As such, 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...but we're still closely monitoring innovations in architectures and fabrication processes to see where things are going." Griffais re-confirmed this stance in an interview with CNBC (at TGS 2023)—Valve wants more gamers to adopt the platform before a push into next-gen—with improved user interfaces, more development partners and an ironing out of supply chain issues: "We're looking at this performance target that we have as a stable target for a couple years."
30 Comments on Valve Not Rushing Out Steam Deck 2
People will NEVER be satisfied with the efficiency of a battery-powered device. Everyone has different needs and wants. Heck, there's a person on my company's public forums that keeps whining we don't support mod tools on the steam deck! Definitely not a priority for us to support people creating mods on a handheld device running our game through a compatibility layer. But apparently, for this person it's extremely important to have this ability.
So again, to reiterate - different people will define efficiency differently.
The performance leap Valve probably wants is in the triple digits, which generally does take a while.
I do hope that the Deck becomes a more and more important factor for development, not just as someone who dailies Linux, but also from the perception of system requirements.
If games have to at least look decent at 30fps on the deck, that requires a decent bit of scaling and optimization. It should be doable for a lot of games but it requires effort.
Steam Deck 3 though will never happen, everyone knows Valve can't count to three.
SteamOS is a gem and I hope it never goes away.
----so maybe we will get a RDNA4 custom 2nm node APU for Deck 2. that would be pretty dang epic
Dieshrink and USB4 (for eGPU/desktop replacement).
Otherwise, I tend to agree with Valve's commentary.
They just simply aren't in direct competition with really anyone and haven't been since the 16bit era war with SEGA. The DS wasn't actually competing with the PSP it did something completely different just as the 3DS wasn't competing with the PS Vita. The Wii controlers wasn't actually competing with the PS3 or the 360 it did something utterly different. The Switch isn't competing with Sony or Microsoft either.
It's a good thing as well. Nintendo comes up with some bonkers stuff but you can see the evolution from the Wii controlers to some of the VR controllers. The Steam Deck obvious took a lot of inspiration from the Switch. The N64 introduced analogue sticks. The DS brought out touch screen gaming. A lot of games on other platforms clearly got some of their ideas and other stuff from various Zelda, Mario, and Metroid games. Hell there are dozens of Smash Brothers clones on Steam right now, same with Animal Crossing. They don't compete really with others but they sure as shit come out with a lot of great ideas that other companies ape and at times do better and other times do worse at.
We're all better off with Nintendo being their crazy own selves and not really giving a damn about anyone else.