As a Steam Deck user that doesn’t know an awful lot about tech specs and the inner-workings of these sorts of things, I’m curious why the the new OLED release wasn’t considered enough of an improvement over the LCD model to be considered the “Steam Deck 2”? The better screen, better battery life, and better storage all seem like huge improvements. Was not enough changed about it? Do you think there will ever be a big Steam Deck 2 release, or just occasional (big) refreshes like this, meaning Deck owners will just have to decide when enough has changed for them to justify an upgrade?
Note: I own the 512gig LCD model and I LOVE it. It opened up a world of gaming that I always wanted to explore, but always seemed pretty cost-prohibitive.
Because, technically, it’s the same platform with the same performance. It’s just a nice hardware revision, but technically it’s the same device from, for example, game devs point of view (I know it’s not exactly good comparison, because there are no games made exclusively for Deck, but some games have built-in optimized presets for achieving best performance on Deck, because it’s a popular system with uniform specs). Deck 2 will bring improved performance, and that will be a step for next generation, not some minor hardware improvements
Same chip, same performance. If they did call it the Deck 2 the Internet would get so angry at them.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the eventual second generation closely resembles the OLED apart from performance. I’m sure there’ll be improvements, but they seem to have had a laundry list of improvements they couldn’t get into the launch model in the timeframe they wanted at the cost they were targeting, and I get the impression that’s not really the case with the OLED - this one is, effectively, the one they wish they could have built all along.
I could be wrong,maybe we’ll see a big design shake up, but I won’t be shocked if the Deck 2 is mostly a faster Deck OLED.
What would be nice, if less likely, would be if they were able to make the motherboard compatible and sell them as an upgrade kit.
Same thing as Switch OLED is not Switch 2. PS4 pro is not the PS5.
It still belongs in the same generation with no significant changes in terms of power/performance.
We are waiting for the wizards to trick the lightning rocks into thinking better before trapping them in more expensive boxes