Sam Mashkovech
Now that Valve’s Steam Deck has been Technically available for about 10 months (and widely available for about two months), customers are increasingly wondering what Valve might have in store for them for an inevitable “version 2.0” of the hands-on gaming laptop. While some players might be looking for a more powerful “Steam Deck Pro,” hardware designers Lawrence Yang and Pierre-Loup Griffais say battery life and screen quality are the biggest “pain points.” most likely they would like to address in a new release.
This news comes from an extensive interview with The Verge, where the pair of Valve designers hinted that keeping the same base spec target for future hardware could be valuable. Right now the fact that all Steam Decks can play the same games and we have a goal for users to understand what kind of performance level to expect when playing and for developers to understand what ‘you have to target – there’s a lot of interest in having that spec,’ Griffais told The Verge.
“I think we will choose to keep the performance level a bit longer and only change the performance level when there is a significant gain to be had,” added Griffais.
Right now, it’s hard to say that putting more powerful CPUs into a new Steam Deck would result in a “significant gain” for users. As it stands, there is well over 6,000 Steam titles listed as “verified” or “playable” on Steam Deck.which means they have little to no trouble hitting the system’s 1200×800 resolution at a minimum of 30 fps. It’s not just legacy titles that get checked, either; many recent AAA releases like elderberry ring, Spider-Man: Remasteredand Death Stranding: Director’s Cut have been fully verified by the bridge.
A high-end “Steam Deck Pro” might be able to extract a slightly higher resolution or frame rate from some of these games, of course. But as long as a critical mass of games are in playable form on hardware, Valve seems less interested in increasing performance and more interested in increasing battery life. We also wouldn’t mind if specification consistency meant that a new Steam Deck could be thinner and/or lighter than the current chunky version, but that’s pure wish on our part.
Past, present and future updates
Elsewhere in Verge’s interview, Valve’s designers revealed some somewhat stealthy internal changes they’ve made to recently manufactured Steam Deck units. This includes a change in the adhesive that holds the battery in place, which should make it easier to remove and replace, improving a problem. identified by the teardown specialists at iFixit.
A whiny Delta Electronics fan in some earlier Steam Deck units has also been replaced in newer units with one with thicker foam padding, which you can buy and install yourself if you have the noisy version. The new Steam Deck units also improve the feel of the spongy Steam and Quick Access buttons that sit next to the screen, the designers said.
Valve also plans to roll out additional Steam Deck features via software updates in the coming months. These include the ability to choose a new Bluetooth profile/codec to reduce wireless audio lag and use Bluetooth microphones, for starters. Steam Deck users will also soon be able to share power profiles, just as they can currently share custom control profiles for specific games, to maximize battery life and performance through crowdsourcing.
The Steam Deck’s “trippy” dynamic cloud sync feature– which allows you to take a game elsewhere as soon as you put the Steam Deck to sleep – it will be up to individual developers to implement this, however. There are no plans to require such support under Valve’s Deck Verified program, the designers said.
The most interesting tease from the interview, however, was about the possibility of reviving Valve. the defunct Steam Machines range. That could mean new third-party mini PCs designed to connect to a TV, now running the new and improved SteamOS version of Steam Deck. While the original Steam Machines effort failed for several reasonsthey might just be more successful these days if they incorporate the vastly improved game compatibility and feature set proven on Steam Deck.
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