The current Steam Deck uses custom AMD silicon based on the firm’s RDNA 2 architecture, which was first announced in 2020 and started appearing in consumer gadgets a year later. Valve won’t likely want to launch a Steam Deck successor until there’s a new generation of APU (the combined processor and graphics chip doing all the heavy lifting when it comes to games) available. Unlike the smartphone world, which is tied to an annual release cycle, the PC hardware market tends to move at a slower pace. Company co-founder Gabe Newell confirmed as much in an interview with Edge Magazine, saying a new Deck would focus on “the capabilities that mobile gives us, above and beyond what you would get in a traditional desk or laptop gaming environment.” But when, exactly?

“I think we’ll opt to keep the one performance level for a little bit longer, and only look at changing the performance level when there is a significant gain to be had.” Steam Deck 2 likely release dateįirst off, we know for a fact that Valve is at least working on a Steam Deck 2. “Right now the fact that all the Steam Decks can play the same games and that we have one target for users to understand what kind of performance level to expect when you’re playing and for developers to understand what to target… there’s a lot of value in having that one spec,” Griffais said.

Steamdeck release date