Valve make no profit on the consoles themselves right? And if the steam deck profit model of making their money off of games applies to games bought on any handheld, then why not let the other companies have the higher end market and all the research and development costs that making a new console needs. Especially because each new generation would need a refresh to stay on top.(more r and d costs) So why wouldnt valve just keep making their current steam deck that runs stuff well enough for them to keep selling games.
Tbh I never could understand why they don’t just put bigger battery in these things. Like 100 Wh, that would be enough for 4 hours of demanding games, or 10+ hours for lesser games.
Battery = weight. Cost. Heat considerations. The list goes on and on.
Designing a handheld comes with a whopping list of considerations and concessions to make that influence usability. Battery size and heat dissipation are two of them.
Well at least the new OLED deck got bigger 50 Wh battery. But increasing the battery to 100Wh really shouldn’t be that much of a problem. It’s gonna be 100g more weight at most. And I don’t see why heat dissipation would be affected? After all it’s only capacity increase, not power draw, so the battery should let out the same amount of heat regardless of size.
I’m sensing a lack of consideration that you might know less about manufacturing a mass marketed PC handheld than they do… I’m only going to humor you this far.
You make it sound like an additional 100g on a mass marketed +600g device is not that much of an impact, but I’m pretty sure the effects of weight was one of the metrics in the many iterations that they tested.
Two ways: