The continued production and success of the Steam Deck, which has recently included Asia, already has Valve thinking about future iterations of its handheld device. Speaking to Weekly Famitsu (and translated by VGC), designer Greg Coomer admitted that there’ll certainly be another generation of Steam Decks on the horizon.
“Unless something major changes…Development of the Steam Deck will continue,” declared Coomer.
As far as specific updates to the original Steam Deck is concerned, developer Pierre-Loup Griffais has already said increasing the system’s battery life is already being worked on.
“We’re constantly optimizing the operating system to reduce battery consumption when playing games that are not too demanding,” continued Griffais. “For example, we’ve made it possible to play refresh rates at 40 Hz, and we’re working hard to give users more control over how long their battery lasts.”
Coomer views the Steam Deck as an extension of the Steam platform, and as such, could be adapted into different forms going forward. “The theme, size and shape will change, and it might even become a streaming machine.”
On PCs, Steam lets players stream games through Remote Play via either the same or different network connections, and even through their phones. Currently, the Steam Deck only lets players download games onto their handheld and play them, similar to other game consoles.
It isn’t too much of a surprise to hear that the Steam Deck will go on. But hearing what may await future generations shows that Valve will be committed to its most successful hardware for quite some time.
And if Valve does end up changing the size or shape of the Deck going forward, other manufacturers may have their own takes on the original version that could be more to someone’s liking.