Valve is still figuring out ‘how and when’ to do Steam Deck 2

Now that Valve has finally launched its entire 2026 hardware lineup — the Steam Controller, the Steam Machine, and today’s Steam Frame — are we any closer to a next-gen Steam Deck handheld? Valve isn’t saying so yet. The company is figuring out “how and when we can deliver something like that,” Valve designer Pierre-Loup Griffais now tells IGN.

Valve has been clear for years that 1) a Steam Deck 2 will indeed happen, and 2) it’s not coming until Valve finds the right chip. The original Steam Deck worked because it delivered the right combination of price, performance, and battery life, and Valve has repeatedly said it won’t sacrifice efficiency in the sequel.

“We also don’t want more performance to come at a significant cost to power efficiency and battery life,” Griffais told me in 2023, saying he wanted to see a “leap” instead — but suggesting that leap might not be physically possible for another couple of years.

Earlier this year, Valve got my hopes up that the wait for a chip was over — when Griffais revealed the team was “hard at work” on the next Steam Deck gaming handheld in an interview with IGN. He wouldn’t say when it might happen. I assumed that was caution, because RAMageddon had already pushed the company to delay and reprice the Steam Machine and Steam Frame headset by then.

Today, IGN’s new question was: “Has the current hardware shortage impacted the way Valve is thinking about actually putting a Steam Deck 2 into development?” Griffais’ immediate answer was “Not really.”

That could be good news for impatient gamers — or it could mean that the company will wait out RAMageddon before it dares intercept the silicon supply chain again. Valve originally wanted to build a “far more affordable” headset, for instance, but instead it faced brutal RAM negotiations to eventually arrive at a $1,059 pricetag.

The real question is: has Valve yet identified the future chip that will appear in the Steam Deck 2? Because the company will work backwards from that chip’s availability to create the hardware it lives within.

Intel’s Panther Lake handheld chip in the MSI Claw 8 EX AI Plus is the first I’ve tried that comes close to the kind of “generational leap” that Griffais has been talking about, but Panther Lake handhelds are incredibly expensive, and the Intel chip wasn’t a silver bullet in my tests. But I bet Valve has seen the future of Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm chips, and maybe a future one will do the trick.

I hope a Steam Deck 2 will kickstart a new golden age of handheld gaming; I fear it may cost too much for that.

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