I don’t understand why there is speculation on this, they’ve made public statements in interviews on why it wouldn’t make sense for them to do it yet.

• having a single performance profile that devs can work to support for a while
• power vs battery, there have been no new developments yet that can be considered a generational leap already or that deserve leaving behind only 1.5 y/o hardware that still provides a comfortable result (the new oled reveal involves adaptations in the pre-existing profile)

My take on this may be archaic or evidently from someone who got their first pair of glasses a couple months ago, but until cybernetic eyes are a reality do we really need more than 1280x800 on a 7" screen? Does a bigger battery to maintain similar battery life with higher grade component hold any weight (pun intended) in the decision?

It’s clear Valve above all else has pushed aggressively to make the Steam Deck affordable. That’s why you see all the competing handhelds being substantially more expensive, and that’s also why Valve omitted certain upgrades that make sense, but would bump the price up.

Valve clearly also cares about the ecosystem, which is why they don’t want to release a new, faster unit every year. It would leave existing customers behind. They clearly want to go with more of a console generations kind of thing, both in terms of support and affordability.

Making a good product is a challenge, making a product good and cheap is very hard, and requires some hard choices and trade-offs. That’s why there aren’t metal threaded inserts, that’s why the screen isn’t Full HD, that’s why the APU has four cores and not six, that’s why the battery isn’t bigger, the list goes on.

welp.

has anyone seen the latest LTT video?

THEY MADE A NEW OLED SCREEN VERSION WITH A NEW BATTERY!

I think they don’t make higher end deck because it makes no sense. They wanted a portable device, and to be portable you need balance between performance and power consumption. More performance -> Consumes more -> Needs a bigger battery -> weight more, less portable.
Bigger screen resolution -> needs more performance -> …see above.
Current steam deck has a great balance of screen size/performance/battery/weight for current level of technologies. In a bunch of years there may be better batteries and more energy-effective APUs/CPUs/GPUs, and then it will be possible to make a better deck without compromises.

Build trust with gamers and game makers…

Enable us to know that if you get or target deck then that is clear - not like rog ally or xbox series with 2 different specs to target

Also one less device to manage divers and software

I really hope the next device would be steam controller 2.0 before steam deck 2

Beyond leaving it to others, the most obvious reasons for not wanting to get into a yearly cycle is that they will have performance increases in mind that they would want to see before it was worth the hassle to transition to a new model and even when they had a sufficient power jump they would still want to deliver battery life that was at least the equal of the current steamdeck.

Because indie games are popular. Old games are still games. Steam deck has a huge library of games that can run. They arent trying for that flashy AAA market.

Look at Nintendo, switch is old and gets lots of complaints about it being low end hardware. Yet, people still make great games on it and their is tons of support. If anything, Valve is emulating that.

Also, I case you didnt know this, supporting many different machines with drivers and configuration types draws a lot of resources. My guess is Valve wants to work on the compatibility later before even opening SteamOS to a wider audience. Supporting one machine allows them to give great support.

Cheaper machines help keep churn and maintenance down. High-end cost more to fix/debug/maintain. Lower profit margin means even less support, like Asus (shots fired)

But also, Valve wanted to keep it as simple as a Nintendo switch. The more they can convince people to use Linux, the more security they can buy considering Microsoft is changing windows. Some of those changes could directly affect their bottom line, like closing off their OS to anything but the Microsoft store. Microsoft would love to get the revenue that iOS or Android app stores get.

Anyways, those are a few reasons Valve keeps things simple and straightforward.

GabeN said as much when he stated that the pricing was painful, but critical and that he expected it to establish a new product category for Valve and other manufacturers to participate in. with them reaping the long-term benefits, of course.

the only remaining piece of the puzzle is Valve releasing a fully-compatible SteamOS 3 for other devices. they don’t need to, but i imagine they want it to secure their reach.

They’re not going to release a high-powered device because they want to wait until the tech is actually there- tech that allows them to squeeze more power out of lower wattages. That’s the whole point of devices like the Deck and the Switch- getting as much performance as possible out of low-powered hardware.

Another thing that would help Valve release a more powerful Deck sooner is better battery tech, which also isn’t really there yet afaik.

But, until one of these things is achievable, we won’t see a new Deck.

The Steam Deck being so underpowered is really frustrating. I hope we can get a Valve console soon!

Valve is wise to not fall into the hardware rat race, which is the only differentiation that competitors can bring to the table at the moment. They have the pole position in the market and are defining the handheld PC category by focusing on customer experience, not by trying pump power into the device.

their system is barely out and its a niche product on a growing market of niche portable gaming pcs.

announcing a steamdeck any sooner than they have any need to would only harm their profits with the hardware, which currently are strongly leveraged on them being the price to performance winner.

also a new system would be much more expensive and that will make it much harder to sell their stuff

They made a whole new market segment, competing with others on the high end would be a yearly battle. Keeping things simple and making steam OS viable and trustworthy is a more long term approach while they keep the same machining processes longer term on the same hardware making the overall cost per unit lower for them as their not constantly changing it and investing R&D into new hardware.

They are competing on software as that is what they sale, games. Hardware they showed other companies it’s viable and succeeded there. If steam OS becomes open to everyone and works good, that would make a good platform for all these devices. And the steam store would be the obvious choice to buy your games.

Valve never wanted to be the leader in the handheld market. The wanted to show other vendors that it can be done and hoping they run with it, which they are. They just want to sell the software so they win no matter what. You’re not going to see a steam deck 2 anytime soon and I doubt you’ll ever see a steam deck 3.