This previous February the Steam Deck celebrated its third birthday. And based mostly on the rocky efficiency of some pretty current AAA video games on Valve’s standard handheld, Avowed and Remaining Fantasy VII Rebirth being two examples, it’s at present going by a little bit of a horrible threes kinda state of affairs. Naturally, poor efficiency for main titles has led many to marvel once we’ll get a totally fledged successor to the mini PC. Whereas no such factor has been introduced or ought to most likely be anticipated any time quickly, the rumor mill is spitting out some attention-grabbing fodder for hypothesis.
Valve has been clear that we shouldn’t anticipate a so-called “Steam Deck 2” till it feels there’s sufficient of a breakthrough in battery-powered processors to warrant a capital-U Improve, and in a current episode of the podcast Moore’s Legislation Is Lifeless (ht to Tom’s Information), host Tom N/A and YouTuber Jimmy Champagne mentioned that sources inside Valve have advised them that the corporate is sticking to that plan. The truth is, the silicon that appears more likely to energy such a future gadget may put it on par with PS6 efficiency, or regardless of the subsequent Xbox is known as (I’m hoping for NeXbox, personally).
The chip on the coronary heart of all this hypothesis is the AMD “Magnus” APU, itself solely rumored to exist for now. As highlighted by Tom’s Information final weekvaried inside code names and AMD leaks level to Magnus being a probable candidate for powering next-generation consoles, which the Steam Deck “2” may be aiming to compete extra straight with.
That is excellent news for these hoping for future Steam Decks to ship cutting-edge processing energy. The rumored Magnus chip may not arrive for one more yr or two, so we’ll nonetheless need to bide our time with the Steam Deck OLED as Valve’s “flagship” handheld for some time. However once we do get that improve, it certain sounds prefer it’s aiming to wow our eyeballs out of our skulls.
Ought to the Steam Deck be larger, higher, quicker, quickly?
Please don’t burn me on the stake for being the considerably luddite-adjacent witch that I’m, however I’m content material with what the Steam Deck delivers presently. I don’t assume we “want” a Steam Deck 2, even when Avowed seems to be like this:
Personally, I’ve all the time moderately loved the Steam Deck as a pocket PS4 of types. It’s a machine I can use on the go to leap into some titles from the previous that aren’t so previous as to be one thing I’d fireplace up in RetroArch, however aren’t so new that I’m going to be left with half-hour price of battery life after a single play session, both.
In different phrases, for now I’m okay with some experiences—Cyberpunk 2077 and the like—not being at their very best on the hand-held. I feel it’s fantastic for there to be experiences which can be higher had on a PC or console that doesn’t want to supply a compromised model of the sport as a way to not devour all its battery life in minutes. Valve, I’ll look ahead to 2030 for a brand new Deck. My library is large enough and I’m affected person.
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