Valve Won't Be Doing Yearly Steam Deck Releases

This will be a massive relief for many, as not many people will have the finances to be able to purchase a new handheld every year, especially if the upgrades aren't that significant. Luckily, most consoles nowadays don't do yearly releases, and people don't have to worry about trying to fork out for the newest console so that they fit in with everyone else. The Steam Deck is no different. In an interview with reviews.org, Lawrence Yang and Yazan Aldehayyat, two Steam Deck Designers, confirmed that they won't be releasing the console or console updates on a yearly cadence. While most of the world has had access to the Steam Deck and other handheld competitors for quite a while, Australia is now just about getting its hands on the device, with pre-orders opening up in November of this year. For many, this is likely a surprise as the world has had the Steam Deck since 2022, with the OLED being released worldwide as of November 2023. However, Australia is just now getting both the LCD and OLED versions of the device.

We all know that there will be a second Steam Deck in the future, which will add new features and build on the hardware of the Steam Deck to make it more accessible, as well as allowing a more extensive game library to be played. As it is, people have found ways to mod their Steam Deck, and have even found ways to play games like World of Warcraft on their Steam Deck, so it begs the question of what opportunities a new device would hold.

When it comes to the release date of the Steam Deck 2, it seems that the release date is still quite a way off. When speaking about other competitors doing yearly refreshes to the hardware, Valve instantly expressed that they won't be taking that approach for the Steam Deck.

"It is important to us, and we've tried to be really clear, we are not doing the yearly cadence. We're not going to do a bump every year. There's no reason to do that. From our perspective, that's kind of not really fair to your customers to come out with something so soon that's only incrementally better," says Yang. With this statement, they clarified that they are waiting for there to be a "generational leap in compute" before they start working on the next prototype, and want to make sure that there is no sacrifice in battery life before they start shipping the next console.