The Steam Deck has been a major hit. So, a sequel appears one thing of a certainty. However any Steam Deck 2 with a significant efficiency improve stays not less than a “few years” away.
So says Steam Deck designer Lawrence Yang. Talking to ye olde Rock Paper Shotgun (opens in new tab), what Yang stated particularly was, “a real next-gen Deck with a major bump in horsepower wouldn’t be for a number of years.”
This should not actually be a shock. In any case, the Steam Deck is barely now celebrating its first birthday. It is a very slick little bit of equipment with a number of custom-engineered and commissioned {hardware}, not least of which is its AMD APU.
That makes for a major funding. So, identical to the large video games consoles, Steam Deck likes requires a multi-year life cycle to recoup that funding. Rolling out a significant improve inside, say, 18 months, is not gonna fly financially.
Yang and his fellow Steam Deck designer, Pierre-Loup Griffais, additionally level out that there are advantages to offering a steady goal for recreation builders. “If high-end current-gen titles are in a position to scale to Deck and be an ideal expertise, it additionally permits smoother efficiency on a greater variety of PCs, and enhance the expertise for the entire playerbase,” Griffais says.
And, once more very like extra typical consoles, the complete capabilities of the Steam Deck are nonetheless being unleashed, because the current replace to Doom Everlasting with added ray-tracing (opens in new tab) working on the Deck demonstrates.
As we reported late final yr, earlier than a correctly next-gen Deck emerges, we may even see an interim replace with an upgraded display screen and higher battery (opens in new tab). But it surely’s clear sufficient {that a} severe efficiency improve is not going to occur anytime quickly.
That is slightly irritating when you think about what’s theoretically doable on the bleeding fringe of at present’s chip know-how. However we suspect that the present Steam Deck will nonetheless be able to some fairly magical and as but surprising stuff over the following few years.
As RPS factors out, there’ll possible be one thing of a shift in angle from ‘issues the Steam Deck can do’ to a extra particular ‘issues video games can do on a Steam Deck’, as builders drill down into the {hardware} and tease out each final drop of efficiency.
Because the saying goes, necessity is the mom of invention. With that previous chestnut in thoughts, Steam Deck’s relative limitations might but spark some compelling gaming creativity.