It appears that Valve is in no rush to release a more powerful version of its Steam Deck just yet. Currently, the Steam Deck can run over 8,000 games spanning indie titles to more hardware-intense games such as Elden Ring and Cyberpunk 2077.
But its not your typical pc, its a handheld pc of steam. The lowest time I would give it would be 3 1/2 years to 4 years. Also i think they said they don't want to flood the market with multiple with different models over a set amount of time.
They are already taking a pretty big hit at the selling price at floor level right now they won't be treating the steam deck as a typical PC. It's most importantly a handheld, the PC spec is a bonus and a huge selling point. They will milk the 1st gen steam deck for as long as they can to break the curve from initial sale ratios - as consoles do!
This makes sense, there is probably not enough room to improve performance in a significant matter right now. Especially if they want to keep the thermal and power consumption profile of the current device.
That said, other improvements would be welcome. Things like a better screen, removable battery, etc. Could be achieved on a Steam Deck V2 or something like that.
They already said the next one would be an incremental upgrade.
Probably nothing worthy hardware wise in a mobile chip to upgrade to at the moment, for the cost that Valve would like to pay anyway.
Nintendo has a chance to catch up here in hardware, and if they bring good exclusives instead of rehashing the same junk over and over all will be well. I hope Nintendo uses some modern tech in their next device, Switch 2 should be using that new solid state cooling technology but knowing them they will still use a fan.
I returned my Deck after a couple weeks when I noticed a series of dead pixels playing A Plague Tale - opted for a refund instead of a repair and I don't regret that.
The device is amazing with all the tech and power already there (Plague Tale ran smoother than I expected), but the display quality by itself is remarkably low considering everything else in the Deck. If they announce an OLED Deck at any time, I'll preorder it immediately.
That's good. If there were different SKUs introduced every years or two, compatibility would become a mess. And yes, I know PC devs are used to targeting a wide range of specs, but a lot of devs (with help from the community in some instances) are making a special effort to make their games work well on Steam Deck. If there were 3-4 sets of Steam Deck specs they had to target, I bet we'd see a lot less of that effort.
I wonder if they'll try to make it somewhat upgradable, and easier to swap some things around. I really hope these little things catch on. I'd love to see portable PCs eventually replace phones.
I mean they kinda already are. They wasnt the 1st to do a pc handheld and theres plenty of them out there thats more powerful. Its just they are more expensive and steam deck has a good optimization which why they arw able to compete at lower price.
But they difference is that devs aren't going to put effort into specific settings for random knock off competitors, nor is a community going to rally around and $800 Sanyo 7600 or whatever nonsense.
That's ok there are plenty of other companies out there with much more powerful hardware that will run all the games better😁 It will cost more but, as they say you get what you pay for.
Yeah I know they said that last year. They said something about oled screen, better battery etc probably like a every 6 years maybe less
This makes sense, there is probably not enough room to improve performance in a significant matter right now. Especially if they want to keep the thermal and power consumption profile of the current device.
That said, other improvements would be welcome. Things like a better screen, removable battery, etc. Could be achieved on a Steam Deck V2 or something like that.
They already said the next one would be an incremental upgrade.
Probably nothing worthy hardware wise in a mobile chip to upgrade to at the moment, for the cost that Valve would like to pay anyway.
Nintendo has a chance to catch up here in hardware, and if they bring good exclusives instead of rehashing the same junk over and over all will be well. I hope Nintendo uses some modern tech in their next device, Switch 2 should be using that new solid state cooling technology but knowing them they will still use a fan.
And.... What about Deckard?
I returned my Deck after a couple weeks when I noticed a series of dead pixels playing A Plague Tale - opted for a refund instead of a repair and I don't regret that.
The device is amazing with all the tech and power already there (Plague Tale ran smoother than I expected), but the display quality by itself is remarkably low considering everything else in the Deck. If they announce an OLED Deck at any time, I'll preorder it immediately.