Valve Confirms No Annual Releases for Steam Deck; Steam Deck 2 Delayed Until Significant Performance Advancements

The arrival of the Steam Deck opened up a fresh chapter in gaming, letting you dive into AAA games from the comfort of your bed, all with a handheld gadget. Everyone from gamers to tech enthusiasts is buzzing with anticipation about a potential sequel, the Steam Deck 2. With significant advancements in the APU industry recently, hopes are high. However, during an interview with Reviews.org, Valve made it clear we shouldn’t expect the new device anytime soon. They’re waiting on a major breakthrough in computing power.

Valve collaborated with AMD to use the RDNA architecture—a massive leap over the older Vega—in the original Steam Deck. For this device, they developed a special chip called Van Gogh, which is part of RDNA 2, the second development phase. This APU included four Zen 2 cores with an RDNA 2 Integrated Graphics Processing Unit that featured eight Compute Units. Despite having been around since 2020, and even after last year’s OLED screen update, there hasn’t been a substantial performance boost.

In discussing the future, mention of AMD’s Strix Point APUs, based on Zen 5 and RDNA 3.5, naturally came up. Steam Deck’s designer, Lawrence Yang, addressed the possibility of a new model, emphasizing that they aren’t rushing into an annual release cycle. “It is important to us to be very clear—we’re not on a yearly schedule,” he noted.

Valve seems to be adopting a strategy similar to giants like Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft. Take the PS5 Pro, for instance, which is still anchored in the earlier Zen 2 architecture. While there are exciting developments in the handheld market, including Intel’s entry with their Lunar Lake CPUs, nothing has been game-changing enough to warrant a new Steam Deck yet. Yang elaborated, saying they are holding out for a real leap in compute power that doesn’t compromise battery life before launching the next generation.

From a technical perspective, today’s APUs haven’t drastically improved in power efficiency since the days of the Rembrandt series. Lunar Lake is promising, thanks to its innovative design, but Valve remains cautious. The leap they’re waiting for could deliver extensive improvements in both performance and battery life. Additionally, Valve is exploring ARM64 for Proton, hinting at potential use of ARM cores with a partnered Intel, AMD, or NVIDIA GPU—similar to the Nintendo Switch’s setup.

With this thoughtful approach, it seems Valve is ensuring that when the Steam Deck 2 does arrive, it will truly be a significant upgrade for gamers.