We're getting a brand-new line-up of Steam hardware this year. A new Steam Controller, Steam Machine, and Steam Frame, but some PC gamers had hoped they'd get a new and updated Steam Deck to top it all off. Instead, the old dog is still hanging around the young pups, as the 2022 handheld PC remains. It's still a super popular bit of kit, but does struggle to run some modern games well these days.
Speaking with IGN, Valve programmer Pierre-Loup Griffais did have a somewhat promising update for the Steam Deck's successor, even if he didn't slap a release window on it. "We're hard at work on it. And obviously every step of the way, if you look at our hardware projects over the years, you can draw a straight line from the original Steam Controller and Steam Machine to Steam Deck, to everything that we're announcing and shipping this year. And we expect Steam Deck 2 will be a lot of the same where a lot of what we're doing here will be learnings that build up to it," he said.
We do know that Valve wants the new Steam Deck to eclipse the old in terms of performance. Small upgrades of 20 to 30% better performance won't do it for the Steam owner, and so it's for the best Valve takes its time, so it can make a machine worthy of succeeding the most popular handheld PC to date. Let's just hope by the time it does release, the price of PC components has calmed down a bit.