A extra highly effective Steam Deck is “a couple of years” off, Valve says

In the event you’re ready for a extra highly effective model of the Steam Deck earlier than diving in on Valve’s Linux-based transportable {hardware}, you could end up ready a short time longer. In a current interview with Rock Paper Shotgun, Valve designer Lawrence Yang says it is going to be “a couple of years” earlier than the corporate releases “a real next-gen Deck with a major bump in horsepower.”

A have a look at the Steam Deck’s efficiency over its first 12 months of availability helps present why Valve won’t be in a rush to launch a extra highly effective transportable. The present Steam Deck now helps over 8,000 titles which can be both rated Playable or Verified by Valve’s official Compatibility program. And that record is not simply low-end indie video games, both; heavy hitters like Cyberpunk 2077, Elden Ring, and the current Lifeless Area remake run nice on the hand held, and the machine can even deal with ray tracing on barely older video games like Doom Everlasting.

That mentioned, the Steam Deck {hardware} is already starting to indicate its age on some current releases. Video games like Wild Hearts and Returnal will technically run on the Deck however reportedly present some vital body fee and efficiency points on the transportable. Whereas future software program or OS patches may assist a bit for these bleeding-edge video games, the Steam Deck’s unchanging {hardware} could begin to look more and more dated as PC avid gamers proceed to improve their rigs with plentiful graphics playing cards (and PC recreation makers proceed to focus on these high-end desktop customers with their latest titles).

Nonetheless, Valve designers see worth in builders sticking with the Steam Deck’s present specs for a short time longer, not less than. “I consider the Deck has the potential to be a stable goal all through the era,” Valve engineer Pierre-Loup Griffais informed Rock Paper Shotgun, “however the work concerned is trickier than the everyday Deck UX tweaks that builders have needed to do for video games that already carry out effectively.”

Builders who can design top-end PC video games that may scale right down to work on the Steam Deck will even “allow smoother efficiency on a greater diversity of PCs, and enhance the expertise for the entire playerbase,” Griffais identified.

After all, Valve may nonetheless launch a barely upgraded Steam Deck with the identical primary inside specs (a la Nintendo’s historical past of “Lite” portables). Yang and Griffais mentioned again in December that they’d like a Steam Deck 2.0 to handle “ache factors” like battery life and display high quality whereas conserving “one goal for customers to know what sort of efficiency stage to anticipate.”

And Valve will clearly proceed to replace the Steam Deck OS and Proton compatibility layer as time goes on as effectively. Griffais informed RPS the crew is specializing in “value-add options” like HDR help for suitable exterior screens. Which means the Steam Deck you play a 12 months from now will not be precisely the identical because the one you may play immediately, even when the interior {hardware} stays precisely the identical.