Valve gave us the strongest wording yet that a Steam Deck 2 is actually real, although it's still clearly going to be some time away before there's enough of an upgrade.
Recently we had the news that the Steam Deck is finally going to release in Australia, and so now Valve have another market opened up for future hardware launches. So, a few Australian websites managed to get Valve to open up a little to discuss the future and it's sounding good.
Speaking to Reviews.org Australia here's what Steam Deck designer Lawrence Yang said about a Steam Deck 2:
It is important to us, and we’ve tried to be really clear, we are not doing the yearly cadence. We’re not going to do a bump every year. 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.
Also mentioned in the interview is how they really love seeing all the devices from other companies, even if they're not a fan of the constant device refreshes. There's plenty of other good stuff mentioned in the full interview so be sure to go give it a read.
It's not exactly the freshest news though if you've been following along, since I previously covered Valve's little handbook for the Asia launch, that did make it seem pretty clearly like more was planned. Still, Valve reiterating it so strongly is a great sign.
Until then we've still got plenty to look forward to like the final release of SteamOS 3.6 (it's in Beta) which will bring another big lot of system improvements. And, whatever this ARM64 and Android stuff is for (likely a new VR set).
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Mohandevir Oct 15
"If you don't care about me, you won't get my money".
After all, the goal of the Steam Deck was never to appeal to the High End market, it was to supply a stable base of development that will meet the widest range of players possible.
Last edited by Mohandevir on 15 October 2024 at 5:22 pm UTC
I'm very curious what hardware they're gonna choose, though. Currently, AMD is the obvious choice but a lot could happen in 1-2 years.
Intel has impressive upscaling technology and Lunar Lake seems pretty great but drivers need to mature. GPU especially.
With enough investment they could also push for ARM. The pieces are there, they just need more work. But it could be doable until the Deck 2.
And with the Mediatek/Nvidia collab, there might be even a chance for an RTX handheld. Although, I'm unsure if Valve would give up control of the GPU drivers.
Really interesting time for speculation.
Last edited by raggytherecond on 15 October 2024 at 5:41 pm UTC
I could build a rig myself (which I'd actually enjoy), but I already know that the cost of something small enough would be way too high
Quoting: raggytherecondThe main thing I want to see is making the shell easier to replace to make it easier for everyone to rock their own transparent shell or shell color of their own choosing. The LED version requires a hair dryer and some have reported accidentally destroying audio wiring as I recall. I believe there’s an EU mandate in place in 2027 around easily replaced batteries anyways so I’d peg nextgen in 2027 or earlier
I only gave mine a new backplate but somehow managed to nick the audio wire and lose a speaker, needing to take about everything except the screen out to properly replace the entire connected speaker setup. Tiny mark that I had to hunt to find that somehow killed it and my fault, but I still with it was a little easier when it comes to poking around inside.
There is little point to doing it for such incremental upgrades. There is an advantage (for developers, and for game compatibility) to having a stable platform, there is an advantage (for Steam, and for price) on having larger batches instead of renewing all stock that often. They still haven't sorted out distribution in most of the world, which in my opinion ought to be a priority over upgrades.
Quoting: missingnoForget about power, I just want a Steam Deck Pocket. One that fits in my pocket.
This depends a lot on what clothes you wear. I have some cargo pants where the pockets could fill a small laptop, but if you wear women's clothing then it is never happening.
Linux_Rocks Oct 15
Quoting: SalvatosA good point someone mentioned in a previous article is also that Valve are still unable to keep up with the verification process and provide consistent, reliable results on many games. Adding a second hardware target to test against is going to basically double the work needed when it comes to performance and drivers (though not UI/UX aspects like font size and keyboard entry, I reckon).They could always, you know, hire more people. But they won't, and they'd probably just end up using crooked contract bullshit anyways.
Last edited by Linux_Rocks on 15 October 2024 at 6:48 pm UTC
The Deck has reached a place now where it is a very streamlined experience for both casual users and handheld enthusiasts. It became clear pretty quickly that Valve betting on and embracing Linux as their handheld OS was an incredibly smart move. Almost all the other handhelds on the market came with Windows, and Windows is terrible for low power devices, especially handhelds. Plus, Microsoft has very little interest in tuning Windows for that use case, so it was up to the device manufactures to try working around Microsoft to get the performance where it needed to be.
Valve using Linux, specifically their own Arch Linux spin, ensured they could actually build and shape the development of the OS itself and tune things at a far deeper level than you could with Windows. This was confirmed by Valve and the Arch team forming a partnership a few weeks ago to continue making gaming on Linux better, especially for the Deck.
Also, valve embracing the 3rd party market for parts, replacements, upgrades, and customizations has been great for adoption too. They could have locked down mods and 3rd party parts sellers if they wanted, but keeping it open and relatively easy to repair/mod is awesome.
Valve waiting for the right time to make sure that the Steam Deck 2 is a huge upgrade to their current model is a great strategy, and I'm sure that all the time they've spent carefully tuning and optimizing their Linux spin for the current model will make the next gen's performance that much better.
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