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.
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
I want to get a steamdeck but I feel (felt?) I’m too late in so I figured I’d just wait for the second one…
That’s a fair reason IMO. However, knowing that it might be a few years out, then it becomes “is it worth the wait”
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.
Because the capitalist system has trained the consumer to always want new, shiny things.
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!
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.
This machine is incredible, it easily plays the backlog of 5000+ games I haven’t played before but of which a lot are way cooler than a lot of AAA being published today because it predates many current bad game development practices. DOS, NES, SNES, Wii, GB, GBA, GAMECUBE, PSP, PS1, PS2, SEGACD, … The list goes on. Steamdeck with Emudeck is a truly amazing experience. I don’t need a steamdeck 2 anytime soon.
same! i have recently been playing wow with friends on it and we are talking about doing a BG3 multiplayer game soon. and i use the steam deck as my daily gaming device!
its also my emulation setup as well. its just so good.
I wouldn’t even call it “low power”. More like mid
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.
I want a higher resolution screen to make specific games more playable, by rendering text and stuff like that at higher resolution (while the rest of the game could keep targeting lower resolutions and get upscaled)
As described in more detail here; https://infosec.pub/comment/17743689
There is a zoom function. Haven’t tried it myself yet as I haven’t had the need yet. But there is on the deck.
I have good eyes, the zoom won’t help me because it doesn’t add pixels to the frame (maybe unless you’re downsampling?). I want more physical pixels, and then higher resolution text to make use of it!
I would like a smaller deck though, the current one is hard to hold if you don’t have big man hands
That’s a fair ask IMO. Not wanting a newer shinier one, just one that fits you better.
100% agree. My only gripe is I wish I got the OLED.
Oh, and input lag in Rocket League.
I havent played it on steam Deck, usually on PC, but on console you can vastly improve the input lag with a few settings, mainly turning the vertical synchronisation off. Maybe it helps with the Deck too.
Yea I’ve done all the usuals, and it’s “OK” for casual play. Playing competitive on it is a no-go. It’s also much better with a wired Xbox controller on the right dock (some increase the lag, some actually make it better).
I want a second one because I know it’ll blow the first one out of the water, with the first one they had to figure out all the r&d from scratch, with the two they should be able to refine the hell out of it, I think there’s a good chance the 2 will be basically perfect. Shame they’ll never make a 3 though.
Ha!
Maybe they’re saving the conclusions to all their trilogies for the steam deck 3.
…too bad we’ll never get it though.
I’m not really sure what’s not perfect with the OLED already, lol. Maybe a second USB-C port would be nice, so we could charge it while using a non-hub device, or use a cheap hub to add even more controllers? That’s a minor, incremental improvement, though.
It could always be smaller/thinner/quieter, I guess, but I can’t think of anything I’d really want to change with my Deck. I have lots of minor pain points with other tech, but I literally can’t think of anything with the Deck, so I’m curious if you have any specifics, or if you’re just trusting that Valve has put some real thought and research into this and will surprise us with design changes for the better that aren’t obvious.
I mean, could it? Maybe it’s because my laptop fans sound like a goddamn Harley Davidson, but I feel like my SD is nearly silent.
Higher resolution. Not for higher resolution games, because at that screen size you won’t pick up everything anyway, but rather higher resolution for text and other visually smaller but important details. I want games to be able to tag a subset of extra important visual details for full resolution rendering, then everything else can keep getting upscaled
https://infosec.pub/comment/17743689
Hall effect everything, adaptive triggers, higher screen to body ratio, reduced weight, usb-c on top and bottom, enough performance to play spiderman 2 in particular on nice settings, 1080p, detachable siderail controllers, better haptics, better speakers. There’s honestly a lot wrong with the steam deck these things were all off the top of my head, if they fix everything on that list I won’t want any other gaming machine ever, though.
Adaptive triggers are fucking awesome
Hall effect joysticks would be great. The rest I don’t really count; obviously, better performance/bigger screen would be an incremental improvement, but I don’t need it. The OLED screen is plenty big enough.
I (personally) would never use detachable controllers and wouldn’t want more moving parts that could break. Haptics and adaptive triggers I don’t care about improving. For sound, I prefer headphones for when I want “good” sound, too, so that wouldn’t make a difference for me.
Even hall effect joysticks are only going to matter to me if my current joysticks break or develop play.
I really do think the current OLED is amazing.
You said you aren’t sure what isn’t perfect, I made a big list and you went “yeah but I’m fine with those imperfections” which is fine so stay with the original, but these are valid areas of improvement.
i’m not, especially the haptics and speakers suck, imo.
They aren’t going for detachable controllers, most likely. Theoretically they might make a future screen + SoC modular so you can swap a frame (it would kinda make sense from an engineering perspective to build the center similar to a tablet IF you can hit all required specs that way), but even for Valve that’s unlikely. They may prototype it but likely won’t release it.
Would OTOH be nice with a Steam Controller 2 which can fold flat to fit in the same case as the Steam Deck. Also not likely to happen 🤷
Cuz there are a lot of games that it can not run due to performance? I mean there are a lot of games on my wishlist that are waiting for a steam deck 2 so I can actually play them if i buy them… On top of that I have the OG LCD version and it’s not worth for me to upgrade to the OLED, a steam deck 2 on the other hand
Your question depends on your definition of “can it run”. To me, as a portable device I get 45 fps on the witcher on medium settings and that’s very playable. If you want to use it as a desktop and expect that the next version will rival a 5000 series GPU, that’s unrealistic.
In bg3 even with lowest settings I had 20 fps, in the last arc I had 2 fps even with 240p… I tired cyberpunk recently and it ran with 30 fps diped some times, which is playable I guess but my battery lasts 30-45 min… And the same issue I have the same issue with all AAA games, I can lower the settings to make them playable at 40 fps, but my battery life is so short that it’s not even worth playing.
In the first place with this it’s best to just compare price to performance with the competitors and even now the steam deck has lost its lead, and it will only get worse if Asus releases a better performing device every year.
The same thing happened with the valve index.
I don’t think you can take a device like this and compare AAA titles on it, but even if we do then I think you can only compare it to other handhelds. Right now, checking the competitors they’re mostly on par right now for AAA performance. I stand by my other comments, if you’re looking for good graphics and good performance, a handheld is not the right device for you - you need to be looking at a desktop with an actual GPU and real power.
Those are real tradeoffs we make by going portable, we expect lower performance so we can get a longer battery life. We cannot have a long battery and great performance in a portable, they go against each other. If others are able to pull it off then yeah go with them, but every bit of performance they add means consuming more battery life.
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Underpowered?! I can play fucking Elden Ring!
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How is that the standard for a thing that costs less than just my graphics card and is fully portable?? I don’t even need my gaming pc to do that shit.
For what it is, the steam deck performs exceedingly well.
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You don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.
Look, I see what you’re getting at, high end GPU improvements have slowed to a trickle and they just keep charging more. You’re not wrong that the business has changed and NVIDIA and AMD are squeezing.
However that is NOT what is happening with the Steam Deck. This is a simple engineering limitation. You cannot have a super powerful GPU in the form factor of the SD due to size, cooling, and power constraints. They can’t just magic these limitations away or throw money at it. To get what you want would not only cost more, but the SD would be twice the size if not more, sound like a jet engine, and have a 15 minute battery life.
Why would you need 1440p on a small screen like that? I think 720p on the original switch was fine and see no need for anything with a small screen to have so hig resolution. Especially since that means less battery time, just waste of power.
Nobody under 16 should be on Lemmy
On a handheld? What even for?
60 FPS is already a meme on computer, even more now that certain companies hallucinate frames for their games with AI.
Yeah what an absurd comment lol… That said, the OLED model does do 90fps
Ultra Graphics at 1440p
Good Battery Life
Good Price
Pick 2.
Add these;
Cool to touch
Lightweight
What handheld, wait no, console period can?
Most people don’t care that much to play at 90 fps on 1440p on a mobile device.
I suspect part of the issue is you’re a kbm player primarily?
Even on desktop PCs, you need a relatively recent gpu to play at that level, one of those gpus is almost the entire size of the deck lmfao
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I think you misunderstand what the Deck is. It’s a handheld laptop with a built-in controller with the express purpose of playing games. It’s not a GPU with a screen.
I feel you about GPU pricing, but the Deck is one of the few things I’ve bought in recent years where I didn’t feel buyer’s remorse, even slightly. How it’s priced is fair for what you get: an ultra-portable Linux gaming laptop. Plus, you get the added benefit of knowing that you’re further supporting gaming on Linux; Proton literally changed the gaming landscape, and Valve has directly partnered with Arch Linux.
I still frequently play my Desktop, but there are times when I just want to chill in bed, sit on the couch, play on vacation, and there’s simply no way I can take my desktop computer with me to those places.
See other comments, this was on purpose to make it more portable. The deck doesn’t need to be a powerhouse, it needs to be portable. We already have powerhouse desktops
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By definition it cannot exist. You can have a powerhouse or portable. The fact that they made the deck as powerful as they did is frankly amazing.
The ROG Xbox Ally X is rumored to target 1080p at $899.99, ONEXPLAYER has models using the latest and greatest AMD AI 9 HX and 144hz at $900~$1K-ish, Aya Neo and GPD Win have some too.
There’s plenty options for “Powerhouse portables”, you just gotta be willing to pay for 'em.