Summary
- Valve says it still wants the Steam Deck 2 to offer a clear performance upgrade.
- Release timing will depend on market conditions and rising component prices, says Valve.
- Don't expect the Steam Deck 2 to drop soon; Valve will likely wait years to avoid delays and high costs.
As far as handhelds that aren't the Switch 2 go, the SteamOS-powered Steam Deck is by far the most popular out there.
For years, Valve has teased that a successor to the original Steam Deck and Steam Deck OLED is in the works, but given Steam Machine's and Steam Frame's expensive price tag, it wouldn't be that surprising to hear that the company has temporarily put the Steam Deck 2's development on hiatus. At the very least, it would make sense for Valve to release a cheaper-to-manufacture, more incremental update to the handheld, similar to Asus' ROG Ally X20.
However, in a recent IGN interview, Valve developer Pierre-Loup Griffais said Valve's plans haven't changed. The company still wants the Steam Deck 2 to offer a meaningful upgrade to the OG Steam Deck, and it's also still very much in development.
"We've talked before about how we want to make sure there's a very delineated performance improvement for something like a future Steam Deck, and I think we're still looking at it in the same way," said Griffais. He added that Valve is watching current market conditions to figure out "how and when" it should drop the Steam Deck 2.
The Steam Deck 2 is still coming
We likely won't see the new handheld for at least a few more years
Valve hasn't shared any concrete information about the Steam Deck's successor and has only said the company is "hard at work" on the handheld. Beyond that, Valve has also stated that it wants the Steam Deck 2 to be a meaningful power upgrade without sacrificing battery life.
A few months ago, Valve increased the cost of the Steam Deck OLED 512GB from $550 to $790, while the 1TB configuration jumped from $650 to $950. At the time, Valve said the price increase was due to higher memory and storage costs.
While memory prices likely aren't returning to where they were a few years ago, Valve is likely waiting for a slowdown or minor dip in the skyrocketing costs before releasing the Steam Deck 2. The company also likely wants to avoid revealing the handheld and then repeatedly delaying it, like it was forced to do with the Steam Machine.
With this in mind, it'll probably be a few years until the Steam Deck 2 is released.