The Steam Deck has been a phenomenal success, and Valve is already thinking about the next iteration. With the Steam Deck OLED, we’ve seen some significant improvements, but there’s still room for growth. Here’s what we’d like to see in a potential Steam Deck 2.
The Steam Deck OLED has set the bar high for its successor
The Steam Deck has been a solid piece of kit, offering a unique gaming experience on the go. But with competitors like Logitech G Cloud, Asus ROG Ally, and Sony’s PlayStation Portal handheld emerging, Valve will need to up its game to stay ahead. We’ve thought of a few ways a Steam Deck successor could improve on today’s model.
Steam Deck 2: Is it happening?
Yes, all signs point to a next-generation Steam Deck. Valve Product Designer Lawrence Yang confirmed that the next Steam Deck would get a “next-generation” power boost. He also said we wouldn’t be seeing it for at least two or three years. Around the same time, Valve hardware engineer Yazan Aldehayyat told Eurogamer that the firm would “love to get even more performance in the same power envelope” as the current model, but “that technology doesn’t exist yet.”
Steam Deck 2 Likely Release Date
We’ve known that Valve is working on a Steam Deck 2 for a while now. Company co-founder Gabe Newell confirmed as much in an interview with Edge Magazine, saying a new Deck would focus on “the capabilities that mobile gives us, above and beyond what you would get in a traditional desk or laptop gaming environment.” But when, exactly? Circle 2025 in your diaries – that’s the most likely candidate for a full Steam Deck 2 release.
Steam Deck 2 Possible Price
Bargain hunters may not be too thrilled to hear that the most popular version of the Steam Deck is the most expensive one – and Gabe Newell suggests the company has taken that as customers willing to spend even more should it release a more expensive version.
Steam Deck 2 Feature Wish List
We awarded the Steam Deck four stars in our review, singing the praises of its astounding performance, intuitive UI, and endlessly customisable controls. A host of software updates has worked out some of the kinks, but there’s still room to improve. Here are some suggestions for what we’d like to see in a successor to work out what would have raised that score to the full five stars.
Longer Battery Life
We’ll get the obvious improvement out of the way first. Unless you’re using the OG Steam Deck to play 8-bit classics at the lowest brightness setting and with all the internal hardware turned down to its lowest level, it isn’t fantastic in terms of battery life. Steam says you should see anywhere between two and eight hours of game time, but that makes for a pretty wide margin.
A Better OLED Display
Valve followed in the footsteps of Nintendo and made the switch to an OLED display for the Steam Deck’s mid-life refresh. It’s larger, brighter, more colourful, adds HDR support, and has a higher 90Hz refresh rate; even at the same 1280×800 resolution, the combo makes the original model’s 7in LCD look beyond basic in comparison.
Up the Accessibility
Accessibility in gaming, although slow moving, is getting better as more developers aim to make their games enjoyable for everyone. Valve could do its part to help in a few ways. First off, there are too many games with tiny text and no way to resize them: offering a way of changing hardware-level text sizes would make games far more legible on the Steam Deck’s small screen.
Time for a Steam Controller Rebirth?
Once upon a time (2015 to be exact), Valve experimented with the idea of a Steam controller. It sported dual trackpads for PC gaming, dual-stage triggers, and haptics that allowed you to ‘feel the spin of a virtual trackball, the click of a scroll wheel, or the shot of a rifle’, said Valve at the time.
A potential Steam controller rebirth could be a game-changer
But the Steam controller ran out of, well, steam, and was discontinued after four years. A downside to the Steam Deck, though, is its inability to fully adapt to games that are best played with a mouse and keyboard. This isn’t a problem unique to the Steam Deck, but a Valve-certified controller built specifically for the handheld would be a great addition. It could even up the vibration, and have some improved ventilation while we’re at it. The Steam Deck haptics leave much to be desired, so let’s update that while we’re at it.
