When Valve first launched the Steam Deck, one of their selling points for the machine was that while it was console-like in some ways, it was still a PC with all the associated benefits. As such, many expected we’d see frequent PC-style updates to the Steam Deck hardware, but at least in that respect, the hardware has turned out to be a lot more console-like than predicted. We haven’t seen a major update in the Deck hardware since it was released early last year and we may not see on for some time.
According to Valve’s Pierre-Loup Griffais, the goal is to offer a set performance standard for all Steam Deck owners, and they don’t necessarily want to update that until they are able to offer a significant jump in power. Again, some very console-like thinking! Here’s the full quote…
"It’s important to us that the Deck offers a fixed performance target for developers, and that the message to customers is simple, where every Deck can play the same games. As such, changing the performance level is not something we are taking lightly, and we only want to do so when there is a significant enough increase [in power] to be had. We also don’t want more performance to come at a significant cost to power efficiency and battery life. I don’t anticipate such a leap to be possible in the next couple of years, but we’re still closely monitoring innovations in architectures and fabrication processes to see where things are going there.”
While that all makes sense, one of the selling points of the Steam Deck was that, even though it was a handheld, it could still play most PC tiles. That’s increasingly not the case, with a lot of this year’s major AAA releases being essentially unplayable on the Deck. Of course, the Steam Deck will remain a great piece of hardware for playing indies, but those who bought one in order to play AAA games on the go may not want to wait a couple of years for an update.
Are there any Steam Deck owners out there? How do you feel the hardware is holding up? Are you willing to wait a couple more years for an update?
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