Valve Shares Its Not Technologically There Yet For A New Steam Deck 2.0

Although it feels the portable gaming market has already been swept up by Nintendo for decades now – especially now with the Nintendo Switch more recently – Valve still remained adamant to enter with its own in-house Steam Deck. Previously, the Half-Life/Portal firm told that the device was not intended to butt heads with Nintendo, but to appeal to a certain user base looking for PC gaming on the go.

And Valve has done so by supporting titles with its ‘Steam Deck Verified’ program for the past year and has continued to grow the number of featured titles to play portably. Additionally, the firm even launched a new game solely for Steam Deck with Aperture Desk Job which showcases the new hardware and further expands on the solemn Portal universe.

And now with the recent announcement of the Steam Deck OLED, it further raises the question until a truly new follow-up to the Steam Deck is here? Well, Valve reveals to Eurogamer that it is not technologically there yet to be manufactured.

Obviously we’d love to get even more performance in the same power envelope, but that technology doesn’t exist yet. That’s what I think we’d call a Steam Deck 2.0. The first Steam Deck was the first moment in time where we felt like there was enough GPU performance in a portable form factor that lets you play all your Steam games. We would love for the trend of perf-per-watt to progress rapidly to do that, but it’s not quite there yet.

Yazan Aldehayyat, Valve Hardware Engineer

“Both the screen and the battery were fairly obvious things we’d have liked to do early on.” Steam Deck product designer Greg Coomer adds. “But the screen, I think it’s the biggest example of something we would have shipped in the first-generation model but we weren’t able to do so because OLED screens with these characteristics in this size just did not exist.

“Back then, we really couldn’t engage with a display manufacturer to do exactly what we were after because they didn’t really understand the product category, or who would be buying the screen, or why it would matter. Now that picture has changed and we’re able to get custom work done.” Aside from upgrading to the Steam Deck 2.0, Valve confirms that it is working on new titles for the Steam Deck for the near future.

Worthy of mentioning supported games on Steam Deck, for the 25th anniversary of Half-Life, the game was officially verified for the Steam Deck earlier in November. You can read the full report by heading here.

What do you think will be different with the Steam Deck 2.0?

Source: Eurogamer