Valve has shared details about the development of Steam Deck 2. Although an official announcement of the new handheld console has not yet taken place, company representatives have made it clear that the project is gradually approaching the final stage of hardware platform selection.
Following the success of the first Steam Deck, Valve has repeatedly stated that they are not interested in releasing a device with an insignificant power increase. According to the developers, Steam Deck 2 should be a full generational leap, not just another update in the spirit of traditional PC hardware.
In an interview with IGN, Valve engineer Pierre-Loup Griffais said that the team has made significantly more progress compared to previous development stages.
I would say we are much closer now than the last time we talked about it. We are definitely moving towards the goal.
However, the company has still not found an ideal solution among the available processors. The main requirement remains to maintain power consumption at the level of the original Steam Deck with a significant increase in performance. That is why Valve is not yet rushing to choose ready-made chips.
According to Griffais, modern solutions for portable gaming PCs still do not provide an optimal balance between power and battery life. Many new processors are essentially mobile chips for laptops, adapted for portable devices, which forces manufacturers to compromise on battery life.
This could include platforms such as the AMD Ryzen Z2 series and the new Intel Arc G3, which are already used in portable gaming PCs. Judging by Valve's comments, the company is either waiting for the next generation of energy-efficient processors or is working on a custom solution in conjunction with AMD, potentially based on RDNA 4 or even RDNA 5 architectures.