Yesterday, The Verge interviewed Pierre-Loup Griffais and Lawrence Yang. Among these answers, the Steam Deck, which has been quite successful, has all the same questions as their future plans. One of these questions was related to a future version of the handheld. With a handwritten note, Griffais and Yang confirm that the handheld would soon be upgraded. They suggest that a version of this would probably not implement any improvements to performance. The next steam deck instead would focus on integrating an improved screen and battery life over the actual model.
According to Griffais, Valve wants to keep the next model the same as its performance, partly because of its actual verification system. The company values a simple and easy-to understand system which lets players know a few minutes ago whether or not the Steam Deck is able to play certain games. If Valve introduces new, patented, games can run, then players could be confused as the players take more steps to see if those games are compatible with certain models.
Valve is making it the next steam deck.
With this in mind, Valve hopes to maintain a slick performance throughout all Steam Decks for a bit longer. Griffais insists that the company will only change its performance if there’s significant gain to gain.
Certain players may feel disappointed that Valve does not plan to make any upgrades to the next Steam deck. The actual models aren’t very capable of executing technically demanding games yet. Many newers will see the newer screens and the battery in more than sufficient reason for buying a newer model, especially since playing a certain number of games on the current models can affect their battery life. This isn’t the same situation as the Nintendo Switch, which really needs an upgrade after all the time.
Image via Valve.