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

[AleksandarK]

In an interview with Reviews.org, Valve's designers Lawrence Yang and Yazan Aldehayyat discussed the Steam Deck. They talked about the console's future and confirmed that it will not have a yearly release schedule like most handheld console makers. 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 into 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 out with a new console soon.



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[AusWolf]

It would be nice if all hardware manufacturers had the same approach. Who needs a 5% faster CPU anyway?

If you have the audacity to call the new generation "new", then at least make sure that it is (looking at you, AMD, Intel and Nvidia).

 

[Hyderz]

i hope valve keeps some stuff the same like... screen resolution, panel type and overall similar feel and design of the steam deck...
i dont mind if the next steam deck comes 4 years later... but i do wish it has more vram, ram

 

[iuliug]

Just a caution - a few months (less than 2) b4 Steam deck Oled was released - they said the same thing.

 

[wurschti]

I like this approach. It's the same concepts consoles use. You don't see a new PS or Xbox every year.
I personally don't like smartphone companies are doing. This overproduction produces way too much e-waste.

 

[Hyderz]

I like this approach. It's the same concepts consoles use. You don't see a new PS or Xbox every year.
I personally don't like smartphone companies are doing. This overproduction produces way too much e-waste.

but the ceo's need money for their next property or private jets

 

[AusWolf]

I personally don't like smartphone companies are doing. This overproduction produces way too much e-waste.

I don't either, but I blame consumers, not the companies. No one forces anyone to "upgrade" every year (although I fail to see how taking out a new phone contract every year constitutes an "upgrade").

Personally, I only buy a new phone when the current one's battery has given up.

 

[Lionheart]

I'm just waiting for AMD's Strix Halo to be normalized, might take a few years but they'll get there.

 

[TumbleGeorge]

Лично аз си купувам нов телефон само когато батерията на сегашния е изтощена.

Тwice in every week?

 

[AusWolf]

Тwice in every week?

Nah, I mean, when my phone can't last for a day on a full charge anymore.

 

[TumbleGeorge]

Nah, I mean, when my phone can't last for a day on a full charge anymore.

Ah, now I understand, you mean the battery has degraded. Because "given up" is adjective action of live creatures especially intelligent of them.

 

[ToTTenTranz]

Of course they're not following a yearly cadence. The Steam Deck will be turning 3 years old next February and they haven't even announced a successor.

As for generational leap compute, my guess would be they're waiting for AMD to release SoCs with UDNA/RDNA5 at N3. Doubling or tripling performance at the same 10W TDP should be attainable at that point.

 

[Raiden85]

Just a caution - a few months (less than 2) b4 Steam deck Oled was released - they said the same thing.

True, but the performance overall was pretty much identical to the original. The OLED one had a more consistent frame rate and in some games better lows, but other than that, the performance was the same. Yes, it had faster Wi-Fi and plenty of other changes, but if a game developer was targeting a certain performance with the original deck, the OLED would be the same.

It’s as if it's like a PS5 vs a PS5 Pro.

 

[mikesg]

The moment LPDDR6 comes out in 2025-2026, APUs will see a huge jump....

GPUs with GDDR6 instead of GDDR5 have a 10% boost, but seeing as the memory is shared with the CPU it may be more.

How else can you squeeze more performance at 15w?

 

[sephiroth117]

I think RDNA4-based SoC can really offer a huge bump to performance here compared to the current Steam OLED, alongside more MT/s for the RAM since it's going to be available and more compatible with newer ZEN cores (which is crucial since both video and system RAM are shared here and video need speed).

 

[Hyderz]

i think the lcd and oled has other more consistent issues, like I have heard quite a lot of problems with its micro as slot… I’ve seen it doesn’t read certain cards, corrupt the data etc

 

[Hakker]

Don't expect a Steam Deck 2 for another 2 years. It's basically a portable console with laptop capabilities added in. So I don't get it why people want a new version now when it can play just about anything except the latest triple A titles.

There isn't a generational gap nor was that a year ago. Heck Valve wants to be sure that RDNA4 will even be what AMD says it will be. a way more power efficient GPU. Don't forget the deck is based on Zen2 with RDNA already. They want something to be at least twice as powerful and probably more like 3 times more powerful than the current deck. You need to see the Steam Deck more as a console (with the release frames to match) and less as a PC/laptop kind of thing.

i think the lcd and oled has other more consistent issues, like I have heard quite a lot of problems with its micro as slot… I’ve seen it doesn’t read certain cards, corrupt the data etc

You're mistaken it for a RoG Ally. The biggest issue with the steam deck is that you need to remove the sd card when you open it up. Many SD cards were broken in half because people forget to pull them out before they open the Deck. The RoG Ally has known issues however with the SD card reader to blatantly not working at all. However I believe newer versions have been updated.

 

[phints]

It would be nice if all hardware manufacturers had the same approach. Who needs a 5% faster CPU anyway?

If you have the audacity to call the new generation "new", then at least make sure that it is (looking at you, AMD, Intel and Nvidia).

Nvidia doesn't below lumped into this really. Their generations have been 2-3 years apart, always using new designs and lithography to move the bar significantly each gen, around +30% per gen is solid enough. Meanwhile their cost on pricing tiers have jumped too so we are certainly paying for it.

Intel and AMD on the other hand have been a joke the last few gens at more like 5-10%. I'm actually glad they focused more on power effiency so at least there is something interesting happening for CPUs. X3D was another jump but mainly just because Ryzen was so cache starved beforehand. We're at the point with 8c/16t CPUs that no average end user can possibly use more threads than this (that isn't doing workstation compute tasks), they have nowhere to go with clock speeds either, so they are a stalemate since it seems very difficult to make large IPC gains.

 

[Nostras]

I think RDNA4-based SoC can really offer a huge bump to performance here compared to the current Steam OLED, alongside more MT/s for the RAM since it's going to be available and more compatible with newer ZEN cores (which is crucial since both video and system RAM are shared here and video need speed).

Will have to see. You can clearly see with the ROG Ally that the newer generations clearly scale well, but only with higher power draw.
If RDNA4 continues this trend (or scales similarly with the power budget of the Ally) there's isn't that large of a jump as Valve seems committed to occupy the low power segment only.

 

[chrcoluk]

Glad they taking an old school approach, there is no reason to do scheduled updates of hardware. Wait until there is a meaningful improvement to release instead.

It also makes existing hardware feel relevant for longer as well.

 

[ToTTenTranz]

The moment LPDDR6 comes out in 2025-2026, APUs will see a huge jump....

We can't be always waiting on LPDDR bandwidth-per-joule increases for integrated GPUs, though. Strix Point should have been a design with Infinity Cache already.
Hopefully, Strix Halo will be able to show what a SoC with GPU L3 can do for optimized power efficiency.

I think RDNA4-based SoC can really offer a huge bump to performance here compared to the current Steam OLED, alongside more MT/s for the RAM since it's going to be available and more compatible with newer ZEN cores (which is crucial since both video and system RAM are shared here and video need speed).

There is no RDNA4-based SoC, AFAIK. After Strix Point and Strix Halo with RDNA3.5, the following SoCs should have UDNA or RDNA5 iGPUs.

Heck Valve wants to be sure that RDNA4 will even be what AMD says it will be. a way more power efficient GPU.

RDNA4 is supposed to be cost-effective, not power-efficient.
Being cost-effective probably means Navi 48 and 44 are relatively small chips, which AMD will be trying to clock as high as possible to make them competitive to Nvidia's offerings with larger chips. And if they're clocking them very high (word is they'll be averaging >3.1GHz?).

Their generations have been 2-3 years apart, always using new designs and lithography to move the bar significantly each gen, around +30% per gen is solid enough.

Just a generation ago Nvidia was making Ampere on Samsung's older 8nm (half node of 10nm) which is definitely inferior to TSMC's N7 that AMD used for RDNA2.

 

[SOAREVERSOR]

I like this approach. It's the same concepts consoles use. You don't see a new PS or Xbox every year.
I personally don't like smartphone companies are doing. This overproduction produces way too much e-waste.

This is where I fall on things as well.

If it's something to do something productive, IE work, where there are actual needs for faster than fine lets do it. If it's for other things like entertainment than don't.

Gaming is by far the biggest and worst offender especially PC gaming which is by far the biggest problem. TVs, audio, and most items last years. In some cases decades. That is what should happen. The non stop computer, phone, and tablet upgrades when you are not actually using them for anything productive is a massive issue.

Valve is taking the right approach. Let it sit and bake until there is a large leap to be had. Until then work on Steam OS and look at ARM solutions to get rid of x86.

 

[cal5582]

This is where I fall on things as well.

If it's something to do something productive, IE work, where there are actual needs for faster than fine lets do it. If it's for other things like entertainment than don't.

Gaming is by far the biggest and worst offender especially PC gaming which is by far the biggest problem. TVs, audio, and most items last years. In some cases decades. That is what should happen. The non stop computer, phone, and tablet upgrades when you are not actually using them for anything productive is a massive issue.

Valve is taking the right approach. Let it sit and bake until there is a large leap to be had. Until then work on Steam OS and look at ARM solutions to get rid of x86.

I dont get the recent push to abandon x86 for arm. x86 has backwards compatibility, arms instruction set completely changes every few years. arm seems like a step backwards for everything but mobile devices that get replaced on a contract.
id rather have x86 where i can still open documents made in windows 3 and retrieve data if needed or where my 15 year old phenom ii can still boot windows and linux and run some modern games.
ARM on desktop seems like one of those corporations manufacturing consent situations to get you to buy into a locked in platform where you are forced to buy new hardware.

 

[HairyLobsters]

USB 4 would have been a good enough upgrade.

 

[Neo_Morpheus]

Well done Valve.

Aya weekly hardware releases made me lose all interest on their offerings.