A second-gen Steam Deck is coming — but maybe not a “Pro”
Valve has repeatedly confirmed that the Steam Deck is a “multi-generational product” and new versions are on the way. What will they include? When I asked Yang and Griffais for the pain points they wanted to address in a sequel, they had nearly identical answers: screen and battery life.
What about performance? Like Nintendo — which has repeatedly chosen not to increase the performance of the Nintendo Switch despite having the technology to make a so-called “Switch Pro” — Valve is similarly weighing whether to keep the handheld’s performance consistent for now. “Right now the fact that all the Steam Decks can play the same games and that we have one target for users to understand what kind of performance level to expect when you’re playing and for developers to understand what to target... there’s a lot of value in having that one spec,” says Griffais. “I think we’ll opt to keep the one performance level for a little bit longer, and only look at changing the performance level when there is a significant gain to be had,” he adds.
