Comment by bigwheels
2 days ago
Any leads on when the next generation of Steam Deck will be released? Hoping it could be sometime in 2025, but suspect it will be more like 2026.
Over the holidays I was playing GTA: San Andreas on a Nintendo Switch. It's fun but so underpowered for a game released in 2004 (Yes, 21 years ago! Damn..). I'm really craving something more.
As a sidenote, it's really cool Valve allows installing SteamOS on any hardware. There are some alternative comparable form-factor devices:
* Lenovo Legion Go S
* Asus ROG Ally
But I have yet to see any of these in real life, so not sure how good or bad they really are.
Source: https://www.pcmag.com/picks/the-best-handheld-gaming-devices
It won't be for a while, since Valve is releasing the Steam Machine next year and has commented that they are waiting until they can build a Steam Deck successor that is significantly better than the original.[1] My guess is 2027.
1. https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/21/23884863/valve-steam-deck...
Just get a Steam Deck. it's an incredible value for what you get and for what it can do. I'm no expert, but I do pay as close attention as I can to what's going on with gaming hardware because of my limited budget, and I'm guessing Steam Deck 2 is more like Q1 2028, not any time sooner. I'm ok with that. I play all the games I want on my Steam Deck OLED, and I see plenty of life left in it, even this "late" in the game.
> Just get a Steam Deck. it's an incredible value for what you get and for what it can do
I'm still kind of flabbergasted that we're in a world where the cheapest Steam Deck model literally costs less than the Switch 2. Sure, neither of them are exactly powerhouses as far as console hardware goes, but at least on one of them you literally can just use the system however you want as a desktop OS as a bonus...
I would assume Steam Deck 2 isn't dropping before at least H2 2026, if not later, if they didn't bring it out with the announcement of the other devices.
Valve's only official statement as far as I know is that it will come when they see a significant enough hardware upgrade to warrant a new system. If they don't move to ARM, AMD's Medusa APUs are their next architecture with major upgrades, so I would guess that Valve would order another custom AMD chip but based on Medusa, which won't release until at least 2027. I would guess at least H2 2027 but probably early 2028 for an AMD-based Steam Deck 2.
I would be surprised if they moved to ARM any time soon, because even if the CPUs can punch that hard, they're definitely not competing on the GPU front, from what I understand of the state of the art outside of Apple, so they're gonna wind up with a dGPU anyway if they did.
Maybe my knowledge is out of date, but I'd be kind of surprised if a Snapdragon can get anywhere near competing with even the existing Steam Deck on GPU performance. Looking at [1] for a ballpark number on Snapdragon GPU performance doesn't seem encouraging.
[1] - https://chipsandcheese.com/p/the-snapdragon-x-elites-adreno-...
4 replies →
Valve has said they want at least double the capabilities, while still fitting in a similar power envelope. Unsaid is that it also needs to fit in the same price budget, but I tend to believe that's their intent. It's gonna be a while. Valve got a stellar deal on some somewhat unusual Zen2 APUs, orginally built for Magic Leap; finding a similar good deal is going to take time. I sort of hope Valve isnt going to put out a $1600 Halo system (but probably would buy such a next-gen Gorgon Halo system). Maybe Gorgon Point is good enough for them, in which case yeah 2026H2 is reasonable.
Are you aware that the year is 2025, and that it is 92.2% over? There is next to no chance of a Deck2 this year. I would really really not hold my breath for 2026 either.
Sorry, good catch - yes, I meant 2026 or 2027!
I recently bought a Legion Go S because the primary way I game nowadays is streaming from my desktop to a handheld, and the higher quality display (1900x1200 resolution with 120 Hz over the 1280x800 and 90 Hz on the Steam Deck OLED) seemed worthwhile given that my desktop can easily provide enough throughput to play with relatively high graphics settings. It came with SteamOS preinstalled, and from a software perspective, everything does seem pretty close to identical. The only things I've slightly missed from the Steam Deck are slight hardware nits with the Legion Go S; the placement of the equivalent of the two SteamOS-specific buttons (not sure exactly how to refer to them, but they're labeled "Steam" and "..." on the Deck) just above the Start and Select buttons while looking and feeling the same mixes me up sometimes in a way that never happened on the Deck, and I miss having four unmapped buttons on the back of the device that I can set up however I like in games rather than only two. I also tend to prefer having symmetrical thumbsticks higher up on the device rather than having one high and one low; I've noticed that my hands aren't quite as comfortable when using the D-pad for extended amounts of time, which is unfortunate given my preference for it when playing stuff like emulated GBA games (incidentally one of the few things I tend to do locally instead of streaming; the low power profile setting already is an easy battery life win when streaming, and in practice it make the battery life when GBA emulation also much more tolerable, along with keeping the fans much quieter without seeming to impact performance of the emulation, given that even with this setting the fast-forward function can go far faster than I'd ever need it to).
If you're considering getting an alternative handheld, a better OS would be either Bazzite or CachyOS Handheld edition. SteamOS is not bad, but it uses an older kernel+graphics stack which doesn't make it very ideal for running on recent hardware. Plus, dedicated gaming distros like Bazzite have additional hardware support (like thirdparty game controllers) which may not be supported in SteamOS.
Currently, AMD Strix Halo based handhelds are the most powerful portable gaming devices out there, with the top three being the GPD Win 5, the OneXPlayer OneXfly Apex, and the AYANEO Next 2. Of these three, the GPD Win 5 has already started shipping. Problem is they're stupid expensive.
Personally, I will wait until I can run FSR4 natively on these portables, because FSR makes a pretty significant QoL improvement on these handhelds.
FWIW it's fairly straightforward to set up FSR4 with Proton-GE nowadays, assuming you're comfortable with editing one config file or manually specifying an env var for the game[1]. I'm not sure if using an alternate version of Proton would be considered "native" though, or if you mean for the default version of proton (or for Linux builds of games specifically), but setting it up is a fairly straightforward process even for people who might prefer not to use the terminal if you use something like ProtonUp to manage the installation for you. I imagine that the process for using a custom Proton isn't much different on Bazzite and CachyOS, although I'm not sure whether it would be something commonly done on CachyOS given that they have their own Proton distribution.
[1]: I don't think there's a way to link to it directly, but `PROTON_FSR4_UPGRADE=1` (or a specific different version if you'd like) is documented in the README in this table: https://github.com/GloriousEggroll/proton-ge-custom#modifica...
MLID says 2028+: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Srvv_Zd_k4c
No earlier than 2027, it's valve you're talking about, they don't need to rush
I wouldn't be surprised if they don't. Valve don't want to sell hardware, they want to sell games. They only make hardware as flagships for new markets, then they want other hardware manufacturers to take over.
the legion go is more powerful and a has a nice screen, but is heavier, boxier, and has a worse batteyr life than the steam deck
Valves moving into hardware more than ever right now, not moving away from it. They've already sand multiple times a deck 2 is on the cards, but only when theres enough of a hardware bump to make it make sense as a product. Slapping a tiny bit newer cpu in there and calling it a Steam Deck 2 isn't what Valve are about.
They definitely are working on it. They announced the steam machine, steam controller, and the valve frame (standalone vr headset with seamless screen sharing from a PC), and in their reveal video the first thing they rather coyly say is “we’d love to share information about our next Steam deck, but that’s for another day!” and announce a bunch of other cool stuff.