Steam Deck 2 Gets Surprise Update, Joins Project Helix In Next-Gen Line-Up

The Steam Deck 2 has just received a surprise update, and it looks like the next-gen line-up of video game hardware is going to be pretty stacked.

As Valve readies up to release the Steam Controller next week, along with the Steam Frame and Steam Machine coming at some point later in the year, questions around the Steam Deck 2 have surfaced once again.

As one of the best handhelds money can buy right now (that is, when you can find one in stock), the Steam Deck succeeds in almost every area aside from its raw graphical power.

It was great in 2022 when it first released, but despite a massive list of verified games that can run on the device, it’s clear that a lot of intensive games released on PC now are struggling to run well on the Steam Deck. Hence why a Steam Deck 2 is desired by many.

Valve’s own Pierre-Loup Griffais has spoken briefly about the Steam Deck 2 in a new interview with IGN, saying “We're hard at work on it.”

He added: “Obviously every step of the way, if you look at our hardware projects over the years, you can draw a straight line from the original Steam Controller and Steam Machine to Steam Deck, to everything that we're announcing and shipping this year.

“And we expect Steam Deck 2 will be a lot of the same where a lot of what we're doing here will be learnings that build up to it.”

Steam Deck, Valve

Steam Deck 2 Won't Cheap Out When It Comes To Battery Life

Aside from that, we don’t have anything in the way of firm plans regarding the Steam Deck 2 yet, but it's encouraging to see that Valve has some exciting plans for the Steam Deck follow-up.

One thing that seems to be a big roadblock for Valve is the battery life, where it won’t be happy with offering higher performance benchmarks if it comes at the cost of a battery that runs dry quickly.

“We're not interested in getting to a point where it's 20 or 30 or even 50% more performance at the same battery life,” Griffais told IGN last year.

“We want something a little bit more demarcated than that. So we've been working back from silicon advancements and architectural improvements, and I think we have a pretty good idea of what the next version of Steam Deck is going to be, but right now there's no offerings in that landscape, in the SoC [System on a Chip] landscape, that we think would truly be a next-gen performance Steam Deck.”

The Steam Deck originally launched in 2022, where it was initially staggered out due to much higher demand than Valve anticipated. An OLED model followed in late 2023, but it’s been pretty silent since then.

In any case, if we’re looking at 2027 or 2028 as possible benchmarks for the Steam Deck 2 release, it’ll join platforms like the PlayStation 6 or Xbox’s Project Helix as a solid line-up for the next generation of gaming.

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