In a new interview, Valve has confirmed that the second-gen Steam deck is still on the way, but that it's a little ways off yet. A new Steam Deck will only happen when that hypothetical console can offer a "significant gain" in performance, so it looks like the current Steam Deck is sticking around for the foreseeable future.
This news comes via an interview between The Verge and Valve's Lawrence Yang and Pierre-Loup Griffais, both of whom are designers on the Steam Deck. The interview contains lots of insights into Steam Deck production, as well as Valve's design and development process for the console.
According to Griffais, the fact that all Steam Decks have the same capabilities tech-wise is valuable. He says that having "one target for users...and for developers to understand what to target" is useful because it means there aren't any headaches porting games to different kinds of Steam Deck.
However, that doesn't mean there won't be a Steam Deck 2. Valve has already confirmed that the Steam Deck will be "multi-generational", so we can expect a second at some point down the line. When it comes, Griffais and Yang say they'd like to address the console's screen and its battery life, so if you've noticed your Steam Deck dying a whole bunch, then rest assured that the Steam Deck 2 should fix that.
The Verge interview contains a few more interesting tidbits. Yang says he wants to make a Steam Controller 2 happen after the original was discontinued back in 2019. This is, according to Yang, just "a question of how and when". Yang and Griffais are also talking about hardware revisions in which it's easier to replace the Steam Deck's battery, since it's the only part of the console that's not easy to remove, according to The Verge.
Other projects in the works at Valve for the Steam Deck include an audio mixing app for games, music, and chat, as well as fixes for the Steam Deck's Bluetooth audio lag issue. The company is discussing allowing users to share "per-game power profiles" to wring extra juice out of battery life, but likely not Steam Deck graphics presets; Valve wants to let the games themselves handle that.
It's well worth reading through the full Verge interview, as Yang and Griffais have some interesting insights into the way Valve is thinking about the Steam Deck (for instance, Valve doesn't consider the AMD 6800U handhelds to be rivals to the Steam Deck, as its own Aerith SoC is much more efficient). Stay tuned for more Steam Deck news from TechRaptor.
