Valve Announces Steam Deck 2 Delayed Until Significant Performance Advances

When the Steam Deck arrived on the scene, it ushered in a fascinating new chapter for gamers, offering the thrill of tackling AAA games right from the comfort of your couch with a compact handheld device. The buzz hasn’t faded, as gaming devotees eagerly await whispers of a potential Steam Deck 2. Given the significant leaps in the APU industry over the recent years, it’s hardly surprising that anticipation is running high. However, Valve has made it clear that we won’t be seeing a Steam Deck 2 gracing store shelves until there’s a substantial “generational leap in compute.” This revelation came during a conversation with Reviews.org.

Back when AMD introduced its RDNA architecture, it was a game-changer, leaving its older Vega offerings in the dust with better performance and driver support. The collaboration between Valve and AMD bore fruit with a custom chip for the Steam Deck, dubbed Van Gogh, based on the slick RDNA 2 tech.

The first Steam Deck wowed us with its APU, boasting four Zen 2 cores and a sleek RDNA 2 iGPU with eight Compute Units, both being brainchildren of architectures launched around 2020. Despite an OLED update last year, gamers were left wanting more in terms of performance boosts.

Fast forward to today, AMD has launched its Strix Point APUs, under the Ryzen AI 300 banner, which pivot on the Zen 5 and RDNA 3.5 frameworks. Yet, when asked about any forthcoming successor, Steam Deck designer Lawrence Yang reaffirmed, “We’ve been clear, we’re not adhering to a yearly schedule for releases.”

Valve seems to be echoing the strategies of gaming giants like Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft. Take the latest PS5 Pro for example—it still clings to the older Zen 2 architecture. While strides have been made in the handheld arena, notably with Intel’s entry with its Lunar Lake CPUs, nothing drastic enough compels Valve to rush out a Steam Deck 2 just yet. Yang emphasized, “We’re truly waiting for that game-changing leap in compute tech that won’t compromise battery longevity before we roll out a true second-generation Steam Deck.”

On a more technical note, today’s APUs haven’t shown marked performance improvements at sub-15W levels compared to the era of Rembrandt (Ryzen 6000 Mobile). Lunar Lake’s new design marks progress, but if that’s not enough to sway Valve, the Steam Deck 2 could promise significant advancements in performance and battery efficiency. Plus, Valve is also busy developing an ARM64 version of Proton, hinting that a combination with Arm cores and a GPU from giants like Intel, AMD, or NVIDIA, much like the Nintendo Switch, could be on the cards.