Is The Steam Deck 2 On The Way?
No one quite knew how well the Steam Deck would do, including Valve. Now, the company has been discussing the idea of starting on the Steam Deck 2.
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Valve is going to do something with Steam Deck, its handheld gaming PC, that it hasn’t done with any of the previous iterations of gaming hardware the company has released — turn it into a multigenerational product. This means that the company plans to follow up on its handheld gaming hardware by releasing multiple generations of the product, which undeniably confirms that Steam Deck 2 is on the way — at least in theory.
According to IGN, Valve has created an ebook that introduces the company to the Asian market, as Deck launches in the Asian territories. This wouldn’t be as surprising, considering that almost all hardware, from gaming tech to home appliances, is accompanied either by digital or physical documents. However, what’s interesting about Valve’s ebook is the fact that it introduces the company’s Steam Deck handheld as a multigenerational product — signaling the company’s plans to release Steam Deck 2 at some point.
Steam’s booklet actually provides several vision statements, mostly regarding the Steam Deck and SteamOS, promising longevity of its gaming platforms by releasing generational hardware — thus keeping the Steam Deck relevant with the times. Now, whether or not the future iterations of Steam Deck will be numerical, e.g., Steam Deck 2, or serial, remains to be seen, but it’s nice to see the company go in a direction in which it hasn’t gone before — committing to upgradable hardware releases.
For those who aren’t s familiar with Valve’s history, some time after it started offering gaming services, the company forayed into hardware production, and its results weren’t as expected. The Steam Controller wasn’t a massive success, and neither were Steam Machine, Steam Link, or the Valve Index. Admittedly, while there’s some development behind the latter piece of hardware, nobody’s really expecting a new Steam Controller. With that said, releasing Steam Deck 2 makes perfect sense due to several reasons.
Reason number one is the massive demand for Steam Deck, which drastically outperformed Valve’s expectations so much that the company has a backlog of orders on the gaming handheld. Number two is the psychology of an average gamer. Apart from streamers, promoters, and the wealthy, not many gamers rush to get the v1.0 releases of gaming hardware, as the price-performance ratio often isn’t where it’s supposed to be. Instead, many gamers wait for a revision of the current hardware or a generational release, like the purported Steam Deck 2.
We’re not saying that the current iteration of Steam Deck is bad or buggy by any means. In fact, Valve did the commendable thing and made its gaming hardware entirely upgradable and repair-friendly, going so far as to start up a partnership with iFixit — a company that openly advocates for the Right to Repair. This means that, with a little bravery, you can connect a full-size desktop GPU to your Steam Deck and increase its graphical processing prowess even further.
With everything said, Valve hasn’t officially announced the Steam Deck 2, but that’s not to say that the hardware isn’t being developed behind closed curtains. The company’s announcement of Steam Deck as a multigenerational product shows intent, and it’s entirely possible that we’ll see a Steam Deck 2 alongside PlayStation 6 and next-gen Xbox-whatever in the following years. Considering the massive demand for the current iteration of Steam Deck, it’s safe to assume that the follow-up versions will be more powerful, if not more successful.
