Valve has mentioned their desire to create another Steam Deck following the success of their initial product in 2022. This past May, they confirmed that its successor is in development. Recent updates, however, state that it will not be released for quite some time
Speaking to The Verge and CNBC, Valve’s Pierre-Loup Griffais revealed that the system will be released in late 2025 at the earliest. The reason being Valve hopes to have the Steam Deck’s successor have a better performance without severely penalizing the battery life.
“I don’t anticipate such a leap to be possible in the next couple of years,” Griffais wrote to The Verge.
Although it’s been less than two years since it released, the Deck is now seeing some issues as bulkier AAA games continue to launch on it. Starfield is playable at the most on the system once you optimize the settings to make it work, but it is not the ideal experience for Bethesda’s outer space adventure. Game Pass Ultimate subscribers are welcome to stream the game to the Deck to allow a smoother experience.
The Steam Deck was first released in North America and Europe on February 25 2022 while the Australian launch arrived on December 17 2022. Valve’s take on the handheld gaming device received critical acclaim. Players were delighted to finally have access to their Steam library while on the go, and were happily surprised that the system mostly kept up performance-wise. One of the biggest issues with the system though is the battery life which Valve stated could last up to eight hours. Dave James of PCGamer tweaked the settings to maximize the battery by lowering brightness and locking the FPS to 30, he was still unable to reach those elusive eight hours of playtime, although it still lengthened his gaming sessions. With this in mind, it makes sense why Valve is hesitant to hurry the Deck’s successor.