Valve outlines new Steam Deck gaming handheld timeline

[Redaktion]

Valve employees have hinted at the state of the Steam Deck platform going forwards. While many gaming handheld manufacturers release new models yearly, Valve will take a different approach. However, this means that the Steam Deck will remain a current-generation device for a while to come.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Valve-outlines-new-Steam-Deck-gaming-handheld-timeline.700367.0.html

[Anonymousgg]

Any gains would be appreciated, but as long as most new games can hit 720p30 with low settings, the Steam Deck's current SoC is fine. Focusing on increasing battery life and keeping price points low will help them move more units. The more Steam Decks they sell, the more likely developers are to optimize for it.

When they finally launch a new version with a better CPU and 2-4x the GPU performance, that can help them keep up with current games and push the settings up. Nothing above 1080p60 is likely to matter for mobile use, but maybe FSR could be used to hit higher resolutions when docked (or generate some fake frames).

[RealChris]

Valve Made The Right Decision. No Reason To Rush A New Deck, When Current One Is Just Fine, While I Agree They Can Approach Refined Ones As The Years Go By To Update The Battery, Screen, Etc. The APU At The Current Stage Is Incredible For What Its Achieving Right Now On This Portable Gaming PC. What They Need To Do At This Point Is Perfect The Software Of Wine, Make It Work On Current Games That Won't, If They Can Get Games Launchers To Boot Under Linux Like Fallen Earth, Entropia Universe, I Can Ditch Windows Entirely. Until Then I Have To Switch Back And Fourth To Deck To Windows.

[Anynonymouse]

Any gains would be appreciated, but as long as most new games can hit 720p30 with low settings, the Steam Deck's current SoC is fine. Focusing on increasing battery life and keeping price points low will help them move more units. The more Steam Decks they sell, the more likely developers are to optimize for it.

When they finally launch a new version with a better CPU and 2-4x the GPU performance, that can help them keep up with current games and push the settings up. Nothing above 1080p60 is likely to matter for mobile use, but maybe FSR could be used to hit higher resolutions when docked (or generate some fake frames).

With the current chip it's really a power/cooling constraint. If it weren't soldered on and you could pop it onto a board with a big air cooler and ~100 watts power, it'd perform close to the PS5 at 1080p and almost identical to AMDs zen2 APU's, which can do most modern games at 1080p 60 medium to the lower end of high settings. The hardware is genuinely great for the price.

Having to cool all of that though in a handheld format, hold a power source in it that can game for reasonable time frames is where it got really complicated and held back. There's not a big market for the LTT hot-rod cooling mod setup, but it certainly was impressive.

I think Valve is keenly aware that they over provisioned in some areas though. It gives them leeway for the next few years because there's plenty of ways to up performance, if marginally in most situations, through software updates alone. Some of the more complex Proton+DXVK tricks they've pulled have already been pretty impressive. Probably most well known since it was their first big one was the Elden Ring frame timing fix in DXVK. It's easier to notice when comparing windows desktop to Linux desktop, but even on the Steam Deck with lower settings to get 30+ FPS, the frame timing is still noticeably better than on Windows.

Valves been doing the Linux thing as a side gig for a while now, and they're definitely getting good at it. I bet we keep seeing lots of unseen unless you go looking for them fixes like that which will improve performance as much as they can. Then my hope is they come out with a slightly OC'd docked mode (or I guess high power charger) that gives a little more power. Mostly for using while docked to a TV for instance. But maybe a Dock 2.0 that helps with the cooling would be a necessity to ensure temps don't get too high.

Guess we just get to wait and see what Valve does though. If there's one thing Valve has always been great at, it's being incapable of keeping it's userbase updated regularly. So I'll be setting my alerts to run on Valve-Time.

[Ramsey]

Not only is the hardware competent, but I also guess they could prioritize making the venture profitable and increasing production and sales. The least they need right now is hardware revision that would make that less viable.

It will be especially interesting to see increased performance on the Steam Deck once AMD releases FSR 3.0.

I wonder if Proton updates could make the Deck more efficient as well.

[Desiderata03]

Strategically I think it makes a lot more sense to make each iteration of the deck the focus for at least a few years. One of the biggest selling points of the Steam Deck over other handhelds is that Valve guarantees compatibility with a growing collection of games that they put a lot of work validating. It also gives developers a simple target to shoot for in terms of specs they can make sure their game is able to run smoothly at if they want access to the Deck's player base.

If Valve churned out a system with new specs every year or two, developers wouldn't have one defined target and the older models would likely age out of compatibility more quickly. That makes the prospect of buying one a lot less appealing to customers if you need to worry about the device becoming obsolete in just a couple years. Plus it would be a ton of extra work to validate Steam's massive collection of games on multiple devices concurrently.

Valve is positioning the Steam Deck as a device that gets the best of both the console and PC gaming worlds, and I think a minimum shelf life is something they need to ensure, similar to consoles, if they want to continue to succeed hitting that niche.

[Anthony]

The Steam Deck has been on the market for over a year now

In some places. We still can't even pre-order one in Australia.

Valve not rushing to a Steam Deck 2 makes sense for many reasons, one of which is that Steam still haven't worked out how to do international distribution of hardware properly. It took 2 years for the Valve Index to reach Australia, and apparently Steam learnt nothing from that fiasco and are repeating the same mistakes with the Steam Deck.

[Anonymousgg]

It took 2 years for the Valve Index to reach Australia, and apparently Steam learnt nothing from that fiasco and are repeating the same mistakes with the Steam Deck.

I think you need a reality check on the importance of your country. Well, at least you get to play with nuclear subs now.