this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2025

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Steam Deck

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New rumor suggests Valve's Steam Deck 2 is much further away than we thought (www.pcguide.com)

submitted 1 week ago by Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz to c/steamdeck@sopuli.xyz

166 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Source is KeplerL2, who is generally considered a reliable source for insider hardware info, particularly on AMD GPU hardware and AMD SoC for consoles.

Previously I would have personally estimated Steam Deck 2 to release mid 2026-early 2027, but the recent info about an upcoming Steam Machine made me think that maybe I should push back that estimate.

Of course even if we assume this is reliable insider info, a lot can change in couple years, so things can definitely change.

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[–] tekeous@beehaw.org 2 points 6 days ago

I love my Steam Deck OLED and would only really consider an upgrade for things that improve the experience or reliability. Being able to run low and medium-graphics games locally and stream everything else from my PC with Remote Play is awesome.

I’d only want things like:

Hall effect or TMR sticks and triggers
Better battery life(but honestly it’s already great)
1080p, but not at the cost of horsepower or battery
More CPU and GPU power is never a bad thing but I wouldn’t want it at the cost of battery
Cooler and quieter(it gets warm and loud on Forza 5, TABS, Helldivers 2, etc)
Thunderbolt with external GPU support on the dock
More storage is always a good thing and 2230 SSDs pretty much top out at 2TB
The Bluetooth is laggy but I dunno, Bluetooth just kinda always sucks

and bloody hell Valve put the god damn xone driver in your SteamOS so I can use my Xbox wireless receiver without installing the driver after every update

[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 177 points 1 week ago (46 children)

I don't know why people are so eager for it, the deck is great, it's a great purchase. I wish I had gotten the OLED, but I'm very very happy with it. I don't see that it needs to be replaced annually or even every 2-3 years. It's like the switch, why not go 4+ years before hardware drives that a new one is possible

[–] the_q@lemmy.zip 106 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Because the capitalist system has trained the consumer to always want new, shiny things.

[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 37 points 1 week ago

There you go, that's the answer. Can't just be happy with what we have, not even for a couple of years. Time to throw it away, get the new one!

[–] Nima@leminal.space 47 points 1 week ago (4 children)

PC gamers are very excited that there's a handheld PC on the market thats made by Valve, but they don't understand its meant to be a low-power gaming device. its not meant to be a 500+fps massive rig with all the trimmings and fixins.

They are trying to apply their upgrade logic/obsessive consumerism to a device that neither wants nor needs that in its own market.

[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 34 points 1 week ago (3 children)

This has been a major annoyance I've had too with gamers. It was never meant to play games at 240fps with ultra graphics. It's meant as a way to make "most" games playable on the road. A great low cost entry point, or something to compliment your big gaming rig. I don't need an upgrade because it does what it does great, plays most games on decent settings well enough for the duration of a flight or trip. If you want ultra graphics, you will have to pay ultra prices and probably do a big desktop. Even "Steam Deck 2" will still probably only do 30-45fps games on medium, just newer games will be a bit more playable.

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[–] neon_nova@lemmy.dbzer0.com 18 points 1 week ago

When I first got the steam deck, I thought it was so great and used it all the time; I still do.

I told my wife that I liked it so much that I would buy the next one as soon as it released.

After having it for some time, I realized that all the games I play run on it easily and there is no real need to upgrade.

So, I plan to use this steamdeck until it it stops working. I imagine that will be a while as I’m going to repair it when/if something breaks.

[–] BuboScandiacus@mander.xyz 12 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

I would like a smaller deck though, the current one is hard to hold if you don't have big man hands

[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 13 points 1 week ago

That's a fair ask IMO. Not wanting a newer shinier one, just one that fits you better.

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[–] bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 77 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Nothing has indicated that a new Steam Deck is anywhere near a release or announcement. They said themselves time and time again that they would want a new Steam Deck to be a significant upgrade on the first one.

As long as a really big performance improvement is not possible there won't be a new Steam Deck. And I don't think running Cyberpunk 1080p instead of 800p counts. My bet is that as long as raytracing is as abysmal as it is now on APUs we can't even dream of getting a new Deck.

Think console generations and not smartphone releases.

[–] marlowe221@lemmy.world 21 points 1 week ago

Not only that, but raw horsepower and battery life are always in a delicate balance in any portable device.

There are practical limitations when it comes to current battery technology. Not to mention heat generation and dissipation that comes with more powerful hardware.

[–] Sanguine@lemmy.dbzer0.com 60 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Good, there is nothing wrong with the current gen. I want major leaps every few years not marginal improvents every year.

[–] Death_Equity@lemmy.world 17 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It is like you don't even care about profits and value the consumer.

[–] mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com 15 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I mean, Valve is wildly profitable. On a profit-per-employee basis, they beat out virtually every other company in existence, at a staggering $3.5M in profit earned per employee. The Steam Store is a money-printing machine, and takes very little in upkeep/support staff to stay profitable.

The Steam Deck was never a massive profit-seeking venture for them; It was a way to divest from Microsoft, (who had been rumbling about going the way of Google/Apple and forcing everyone to use their proprietary store, then skimming a portion of all sales made on said store), and to be able to bring the Steam storefront to people who otherwise wouldn’t be using Steam.

The only reason Microsoft backed off of their Microsoft Store idea was because Apple and Google got slapped in the EU, and forced to allow third-party app stores. And by that point, the Steam Deck was already in production, so there wasn’t much point in canceling it. Especially since, as I mentioned earlier, it expands the Steam Store’s reach, which is their real end goal.

[–] mintiefresh@piefed.ca 52 points 1 week ago (2 children)

As the kids like to say ..... Let em cook.

It'll come out when it's meaningful and a big leap. They've said as much before.

[–] mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com 15 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Yup, they’ve straight up said that they’re not interested in iterative upgrades. They said they’d only consider a Deck 2 when the hardware was actually in a place that it would be a meaningful upgrade.

In the meantime, they’re focused on getting devs to actually optimize their games for the SD’s (admittedly aging) hardware. Basically, forcing devs to actually plan for Steam Deck support, instead of just shipping an unoptimized piece of junk out the door and blaming hardware limitations when nothing except the newest cards can play it. There are plenty of games that look gorgeous on the Deck, so we know it’s 100% possible to do so.

[–] Natanael@infosec.pub 11 points 1 week ago

The main thing I want, besides higher performance, is higher resolution to increase readability. Do something like what Apple did when they introduced their ultra high resolution monitors - present it as a standard resolution monitor to software, but then let the OS handle stuff like font rendering at full resolution and overlay it.

That way you don't cause a performance hit from games rendering more pixels than what's necessary for a small screen in 3D scenes, but the detail you do need is there to see. They should work with game engine developers and get the OS side support of it upstreamed to the Linux graphics stack (presumably the game mode window manager Gamescope would be the first place to build it into). It would work in parallel to the upscaling algorithm for the rest of the frame buffer.

Stuff like puzzle games and platformers, etc, could even have game engine support for tagging certain assets and object edges and symbols for higher resolution rendering, not just for fonts, so it's easier to see the important things. You could even do stuff like render faces specifically at higher resolution and do the rest at low res with upscaling.

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[–] this@sh.itjust.works 30 points 1 week ago (5 children)

I don't want a new steam deck. I want a new steam controller and for valve to announce steam machines 2.0

Then we can finally watch windows die a (probably fairly slow, but steady) death.

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[–] tiberius@lemmy.ca 28 points 1 week ago (9 children)

I can wait for 2028, but how about giving us a Steam Controller 2? Take the screen out of a steam deck and call it a day.

[–] TheRedSpade@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago

Take the screen out of a steam deck and call it a day.

Almost. Also put the dual stage triggers back in.

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[–] DonutsRMeh@lemmy.world 26 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Why is everyone in a hurry? What's wrong with the one we have? I have the 64GB LCD one (OG one) and it's fucking flawless still. Yeah, the storage is annoying, but all of my games play no problem. So, what's the issue? Also, do y'all realize how fucking insane the ergonomics on this one? It genuinely made me not look at any other device. Please let them take their time so we can get an even nicer device.

[–] Dariusmiles2123@sh.itjust.works 12 points 1 week ago (3 children)

I guess it’s consumerism and people always wanting more.

I’d be happy if the Steam Deck 2 wasn’t released until 2028 as I’ve just got my used LCD in 2025.

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[–] qupada@fedia.io 9 points 1 week ago (3 children)

There are two kinds of people who would like a refreshed Steam Deck, in my experience:

People who seem to think it needs to be faster. Since it appears to be crafted to provide suitable performance for the 720p display it has (which I don't personally think needs to be changed, considering the whole "portable" use case), this seems to just be a "bigger number better" argument and those people should probably go out and buy a Lenovo Legion / ROG Ally / whatever.
People who are otherwise happy, but think it should have a newer, more efficient processor to get longer battery life, and make less heat/noise in the process. There's a measurable gulf between the current Zen2/RDNA2 CPU and a theoretical modern Zen5/RDNA3.5 (or even RDNA4) model in that regard; it could be tuned to deliver roughly the same performance as the original (or a little more, for the handful of games that tend to miss their performance target slightly) but deliver longer battery life.

We got a hint at 2) with the OLED model's CPU using a newer manufacturing process improving thermals and battery life (of course it did also have a bigger battery). I think the number of people willing to pay a bit extra for what could be an even larger improvement in that area is probably more than some would like to admit.

(I personally fit in that latter category. Considering a full work day including a public transport commute and lunch break, not a whole lot of extra battery could well be the difference between having to carry a charger and not)

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[–] MeaanBeaan@lemmy.world 24 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Honestly, for me I don't really need a new steam deck. The OLED deck is almost perfect already. I don't know that a ton more processing power is necessary for me. Whenever I've wanted to play a more demanding game on my deck I stream it from either my desktop gaming rig, my ps5, or from Geforce Now. (Though i know obviously not everyone is going to have those luxuries) The only thing I think I would REALLY want would be a WiFi chip that doesn't shit the bed if it doesn't like the router your using.

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[–] Linktank@lemmy.today 23 points 1 week ago

Take your time Valve.

[–] yaroto98@lemmy.world 22 points 1 week ago (1 children)

This feels about right. I have an OLED and I got it about 6mo after it came out. I'm rocking it most days, and it doesn't feel End Of Life. But I could see maybe wanting a new one in a few years.

[–] cRazi_man@europe.pub 16 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It will never be "end of life". There are retro consoles that people are buying just for running SNES or GameBoy Advance games. Even those are perfectly functional for their purpose. Even if the Steam Deck got hard locked to only run games released up till 2025, it will still have enduring value. EoL can mean the battery is too degraded, but the battery is replaceable.

A "soft EoL" will realistically come when much much faster hardware is cheaper, the Steam Deck is out of production and it starts struggling to play even indie games. At this point, buying a secondhand Deck for £100 is still going to be a bargain and get recommended for emulators, retro gamers and patient gamers.

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[–] ssroxnak@lemmy.world 20 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Didn't Valve say it was gonna be quite a while until they release a Steam Deck 2?

[–] skibidi@lemmy.world 19 points 1 week ago

They said they would wait until there was a meaningful increase in the power or efficiency they could get out of the form-factor.

The OG deck launched 3.5 years ago, and since then not much has changed. The steam deck GPU has 1.6 TFlop of FP32 compute at 15W. AMD's newest low-power APUs have 2.3 TFlop of FP32 at 28W - nearly double the power for a <50% theoretical performance gain.

A semi-custom APU (that removes the useless AI engine) would compare more favorably, but we are still talking about maybe 20% more performance, not exactly game changing for the cost.

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[–] Rcklsabndn@sh.itjust.works 19 points 1 week ago

It's actually refreshing that a tech company isn't putting out a barely upgraded yearly iteration just to cash in on fanboys/collectors.

[–] Muscle_Meteor@discuss.tchncs.de 17 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Oh.. I kinda hope so.. I just ordered a steam deck yesterday.

I meant to check this specifically before i ordered and i completely forgot

[–] Erasmus@lemmy.world 10 points 1 week ago

I got the OLED when it came out and it was the best purchase I made when it came to ‘consoles’

I don’t think I have turned my PS5 on more than a half dozen times since I got my Deck and that was just to play games like Beatsaber with the family.

The deck just offers way too much flexibility for games not to mention you can take it anywhere.

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[–] network_switch@lemmy.ml 15 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Good choice. As easy to forget as it is, that'll be the 8th year of the PS5. Probably will benefit from similar supply chains as the rumored PS6/PS5 handheld and whatever MS does. Main shame to me is for people buying a Steam Deck and being stuck with regular sdxc microSD. microSD express or that Biwin mini SSD would be real nice

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[–] WraithGear@lemmy.world 14 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

…who the hell thought it was anytime soon? they work on valve time. when they can shift a paradime they do, when it won’t they do something else

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[–] wetbeardhairs@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 1 week ago (5 children)

I don't think they'll release a new one until they make the leap to an ARM processor like Apple did when leaving x86 behind. But that means they'll have to make x86 emulator that doesn't torch the battery. As it is, Proton was an enormous undertaking and it has resulted in a fantastic product. I believe they call pull it off again and we'll get 20 hours of battery life with better performance.

But that'll take a few years. I'm in no rush to spend another $600+.

[–] bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 9 points 1 week ago

Just a note, Proton is mostly Wine, a program that has been in the making for decades and could be used to play Windows programs (including games) on Linux long before Valve started pouring resources into it. They have "just" concentrated development on games.

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[–] woelkchen@lemmy.world 12 points 1 week ago

I don’t know who those “we” people are but benchmarks have repeatedly shown that in low wattage situations the performance difference between Deck and the newer handhelds is negligible, so this prediction is hardly a surprise IMO.

[–] einlander@lemmy.world 12 points 1 week ago (2 children)

The Steam Deck is the minimum standard spec that games aim for to get the verified tag. Move it higher and people will have to upgrade everything.

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[–] Railcar8095@lemmy.world 9 points 1 week ago

Take me with a massive grain of salt, but I know somebody who works with valve and had the oled prototype to work with before any rumor. She said that there's nothing going on. Next one will take a while.

[–] missingno@fedia.io 9 points 1 week ago

I don't want a beefy Steam Deck 2, the diminishing returns on specs mean nothing to me. I want a Steam Deck Pocket that actually fits in my pocket and runs my favorite 2D indie games.

[–] Olhonestjim@lemmy.world 9 points 1 week ago

I am good with my 1st gen model. I ordered it day 1. It has a 2TB drive in it now. The only reason I want the latest model is for the improved repairability. There are only so many times I can disassemble a 1st gen Deck before the screws lose grip.

[–] Mereo@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

This is good. It means that when Microsoft and Asus release their ROG Xbox Ally, Valve will be able to lower their price so that it's affordable and accessible.

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