I love my Steam Deck, as any regular reader will know. It's my favourite gaming device but it could always be better right? And with competition hot (hi Nintendo), I hope Valve have more plans.
Now, I'm not dumb enough to think that the Steam Deck is in actual competition with the
Nintendo Switch. That's just not a reality. The
Switch has sold over 140 million units and continues to sell millions, it's in stores everywhere, people buy it for their children, for themselves and yeah — you get the idea. But still, for us PC fans the Steam Deck (and specifically us Linux lot) and other PC handhelds are simply
awesome.
We all knew a
Nintendo Switch 2 would happen, there just hadn't been any real proper confirmation, until now. Writing on social media, Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa
posted on May 7th:
This is Furukawa, President of Nintendo. We will make an announcement about the successor to
Nintendo Switch within this fiscal year. It will have been over nine years since we announced the existence of
Nintendo Switch back in March 2015. We will be holding a Nintendo Direct this June regarding the
Nintendo Switch software lineup for the latter half of 2024, but please be aware that there will be no mention of the
Nintendo Switch successor during that presentation.
So sometime before the end of March 2025, the Nintendo Switch 2 will be revealed.
That leads me to think about the future. The
Switch 2 will no doubt sell by the truck-loads once again. So let's just set that aside because it's a different market overall. Still, we have other handheld PC gaming vendors appearing often like the ROG Ally, Legion GO, MSI Claw, various devices from OneXPlayer, GPD, Ayaneo and more on the way so there's really a
lot of these devices now.
To me, handheld gaming like this is the future. You may think I am heavily biased, and in many ways I am (obviously, I run this website) but I'm a tech-fan. I have a PlayStation, a
Switch, an Xbox and more. But it feels increasingly weird to have a dedicated solid box permanently attached to a single TV. I actually don't like that at all now. Being able to take a much smaller device with you to play anywhere,
and additionally have the ability to hook it up to a TV whenever you want just feels so much
better. Nintendo definitely had the right idea, as did Valve.
We've seen in the past that Valve have said pretty clearly they
had plans to keep going, and with the Steam Deck still
continuing to sell constantly, it would be crazy if Valve didn't produce a Steam Deck 2. Even though you could argue the Steam Deck OLED is such a
ridiculous improvement it might as well be a Steam Deck 2, I want more. A lot more.
The current shell design is just
fine, I don't think Valve really need to do many changes there at all. The OLED design gave us enough improvements inside to various parts so thinking on what they
should add in for the big number 2: a newer generation AMD APU to bring performance up, with a slightly higher resolution screen and I honestly think I would be ridiculously happy. It doesn't take much. Performance being the biggest one and with more new AMD chips on the way, give it
another year for the generation after that (or their refresh) and we could be looking at a really fun performance boost.
So, let's say a Steam Deck 2 announcement in late 2026. Make it so, Valve.
What do you think? And what do you
now want from a Steam Deck 2?
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2024/...on-the-way-i-hope-valve-makes-a-steam-deck-2/
