Valve Announces Pause on Steam Deck 2 Until Significant Boost in Computing Power is Achieved

The release of the Steam Deck was a game-changer, allowing gamers to dive into AAA titles right from the comfort of their beds, all through a handheld device. It’s understandable why gamers and tech enthusiasts are buzzing with anticipation about a possible successor, the Steam Deck 2, especially given the significant advancements in the APU sector over the past few years. However, Valve recently made it clear that we shouldn’t expect a follow-up device anytime soon. In an interview with Reviews.org, Valve stated that they’re waiting for a “generational leap in compute” before moving forward with a new version.

The Steam Deck’s current capabilities are built upon AMD’s RDNA architecture, which was a marked improvement over the older Vega series—both in terms of performance and driver support. With RDNA 2, Valve, in collaboration with AMD, crafted a custom chip known as Van Gogh specifically for the device.

This APU includes four Zen 2 cores and an RDNA 2 iGPU featuring eight Compute Units, both architectures that have been around since 2020. Despite last year’s introduction of an OLED screen, there were no notable boosts in performance.

At the core of current technological progress, AMD has also rolled out its Strix Point APUs (Ryzen AI 300), based on Zen 5 and RDNA 3.5. Yet, when questioned about a potential second-generation Steam Deck, designer Lawrence Yang emphasized, “It is important to us, and we’ve tried to be really clear, we are not doing the yearly cadence.”

Valve’s strategy seems aligned with other giants like Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft. Even the recently unveiled PS5 Pro continues to leverage the older Zen 2 architecture. Although we’ve seen some strides in the handheld device space, with Intel’s involvement through its Lunar Lake CPUs, these advancements apparently aren’t enough to warrant a Steam Deck 2 launch just yet. Yang elaborated, “So we really do want to wait for a generational leap in compute without sacrificing battery life before we ship the real second generation of Steam Deck.”

On the technical front, today’s APUs operating below 15W aren’t significantly outperforming older models like Rembrandt (Ryzen 6000 Mobile). While Intel’s Lunar Lake represents progress in terms of design, Valve seems to want more before committing to a new model. Additionally, Valve is exploring an ARM64 version of Proton, hinting at the possibility of integrating ARM cores with a GPU solution from the likes of Intel, AMD, or NVIDIA, drawing parallels to the Nintendo Switch.