Microsoft surprised many of its fans with a peek at the future of Xbox. Instead of announcing the new Xbox console, they revealed two powerful Xbox Ally
Microsoft surprised many of its fans with a peek at the future of Xbox. Instead of announcing the new Xbox console, they revealed two powerful Xbox Ally
Valve isn’t making their next Steam Deck anytime soon because the technology doesn’t exist yet. You can crank up the wattage and put in a bigger battery, but those things make the handheld larger, heavier, and hotter, so they’re not interested. This is a bottleneck from AMD and their R&D.
But especially due to live service anti cheat and Game Pass, I agree that there’s a potential market for this strategy. There’s certainly no way they compete with Sony by doing what consoles have always done.
I own the original LCD Steam Deck. Still a fantastic device.
But after trying the newer handhelds, I have to admit: the upgrades are anything but minor. Visually, it’s a bigger leap than the jump from DS to DSi. The difference is immediately obvious.
Apple does have the technology though… imagine a steam deck with the m series chip? An m4 pro could run basically all modern games on a small screen at 60+ fps with the right software…
That’s not really how any of this works. Apples m4 are ARM CPUs. Games have to be built specifically for arm to run correctly. Most games in the PC ecosystem are built for amd64 or x86-64. If those same games were built specifically for arm then they’d probably run quite well but since most aren’t and game devs aren’t likely to go back and port an already finished and sold product to a new cpu architecture they’ll probably run worse. Apple did provide a compatibility layer for other archs to arm IIRC but that’s more overhead for the same games and I don’t know how that’ll impact performance. My point is really just it’s not a clear cut situation of “my games will run better on more efficient cpus”.
I’m imagining a lot of regression in compatibility and performance loss, as that’s what I’ve heard of the state of Apple’s new CPU architecture.
Performance-wise apple’s chips are way ahead of amd and any other arm based chip as well. Not sure what you’re talking about.
And compatibility ofc, that’s what I meant good software. Like optimizing steamOS to run on the m chips.
But that would never happen of course.
Way ahead of other ARM chips doesn’t mean that they’re ahead of the best that x64 has to offer, so that’s why games are still built for x64. The transition to ARM may happen someday, but Apple jumped the gun from a gaming perspective. Solving the software problem isn’t just getting SteamOS to run on it, but to get games built for x64 to run on it, and that’s not an easy problem to remedy. Even if it was solved, it likely would not result in better performance than we can get out of AMD’s x64 chips for x64 games on handhelds.
Performance wise AMD and Intel run circles around the m4, there is not any compititiom here.
Performance Watt per instruction is where the m4 really shines and still I have my reservations
I’m not arguing about why valve is or isn’t doing it, i’m just stating the facts: they’ve decided that it’s not worth working on/investing in. I guess I’m not really sure what kind of point you’re trying to make here
The point being that it will resume when the technology exists; it’s not that they lost interest in it.
I tried to make similar points in regards of it being too early in the console’s lifespan.
Maybe I am misremembering their statements on the matter, but I’ve seen no indication that they’re planning on another version any time soon. All they have said, again IIRC and maybe something changed the last few months, is that they would like to revisit it when the hardware becomes more capable and worthy of a refresh. But that means they literally aren’t even working on it right now, which means we are likely years out from even an announcement. There is no point in sitting around waiting for it or planning for it at this stage. We are completely speculating about any timeline, again, because they aren’t even thinking about version two right now. You’d be lucky if you saw one within the next three years
I think people forget that they are not a very large company. This isn’t just percolating in the background. They are focused much more heavilyon steam OS and third-party support right now than they are even considering building a second steam deck. They’ve explicitly said as much.
“…we aren’t thinking about new hardware until next year at least” doesn’t mean that they aren’t working on it now. And they seem to have low confidence that said new hardware will even make it out next year. Yes, we are likely years out from a new Steam Deck, and you shouldn’t plan on one being imminent. That’s not the same thing as them no longer working on it.
I don’t understand how that’s any different than what I’m saying, in fact that’s the interview I am referencing in my above comment. They “aren’t even thinking about it until next year at least.” How is that at all incompatible with what I’m saying? That’s not even a promise that they’re going to make one. It’s the verbal acknowledgment that in 2026 they might think about building something again. That’s so flimsy and does not require any accountability/commitment from them.
The title of your article is literally “we may never get a steam deck 2.”
He even says:
I mean read over his “Outlook“ section. He’s pretty much fully aligned with my assessment
I have to ask, did you actually read this article in full?
Yes, I did. I also didn’t read between the lines and take that to mean that they’re not working on it, investing in it, etc. It just means that we can’t predict the future, and what makes sense now might not make sense in a few years when the technology does exist. The Outlook section was the author’s conjecture of what could come to pass, but he can’t predict the future either.
It’s not reading between the lines. They are literally saying they are not working on it right now, and that they might next year. If if if’s abound. I just don’t understand how you’re treating this as another steam deck is in the works. There is no company in the world that would say they have no plans to refresh their hardware while they are still making hardware sales as well, yet for some reason we’re taking corporate lines and extrapolating so much because it’s valve? I mean what they said is basically a non-answer. “We will consider making another if conditions are right”?
Like throw down a date. Give me a year. When do you think they’re going to drop another steam deck? Based on the information you have seen, I don’t understand how you can come to any sort of concrete statement without reading between the lines yourself.
“We are working on Steam Deck 2,” Aldehayyat chimed in. “There is going to be a successor.”
That was seven months ago, and it’s very clear. Successful gaming hardware usually starts prototyping the next one very quickly, even if it’s years away. If they didn’t, then they’d always lag far behind the latest technology. Valve don’t know the year. With tariffs alone, trying to set a release date for a new piece of hardware could be a nightmare.