Why the Steam Deck 2 Isn’t Coming Anytime Soon

Like an annoyed parent, Valve has reiterated again and again that it won’t make a Steam Deck 2 until you stop asking about it. While there are several new handheld PCs many times more powerful than the aging Steam Deck, Valve isn’t just looking for a mere specs boost. The technology that will enable the next era of handheld gaming is on the way, but it will have less to do with core counts on the latest and greatest chips and more to do with upscaling software that may finally unlock a true console-like experience on the go.

After Valve launched a whole new family of gaming hardware in the form of the Steam Machine console/PC hybrid, the Steam Frame VR headset, and a new Steam Controller, the next question hovering on every gamer’s lips was about a sequel to the popular Steam Deck OLED. Various Valve engineers effectively said the same thing to multiple news outlets: the technology isn’t there yet. The next handheld would need to have the same power range, weight, and battery life so it could sell for roughly the same price.

Valve software engineer Pierre-Loup Griffais told IGN that Valve doesn’t care about a “20, 30, or even 50% more performance at the same battery life.†The makers of Steam seem to imagine there will be a future SoC, or system on a chip, that makes such massive architectural advancements that the next Steam Deck could bring easy AAA gaming right to your hands. That makes sense when you consider what’s on the horizon and what we know about PlayStation’s supposed upcoming handheld, dubbed “Canis.â€

Look to 2027 for the future of gaming handhelds

Recent leaks from reliable AMD rumormonger Moore’s Law is Dead explained how Sony is working on a dockable PlayStation handheld akin to the Nintendo Switch 2. This device will run on AMD’s unreleased RDNA 5 GPU architecture, which is faster than today’s current RDNA 4. It may be powerful enough to run many PS5 games natively. More importantly, it will be able to run a more advanced version of AMD’s hardware-specific FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) 4, an upscaling technology that takes frames run at lower resolution and bumps them to a higher resolution while keeping the improved performance. AMD hosts hardware-agnostic versions of FSR, like FSR 3 and FSR 3.5, but FSR 4 was a massive improvement when we saw it on the company’s latest GPUs.

We won’t see any sign of Canis until at least 2027, according to Moore’s Law. Intel also has new Panther Lake chips incoming, including a version with 12 Xe3 GPU cores that’s especially promising for future kickass gaming handhelds. We don’t know what Valve thinks about Intel’s chips, but for now, it and every other console maker are sticking with AMD. The Steam Frame is running on a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, a mobile chip that won’t necessarily be powerful enough for AAA gaming by itself. However, it’s also running a new emulation layer called Fex, which could prove to be a boon for any future chipmakers who want to make a powerful ARM-based SoC for handhelds.

Valve is correct that the true “generational leap†in performance and power efficiency that the company is looking for hasn’t arrived, judging by this year’s slate of handhelds. It probably won’t be here in 2026, either. The problem with handheld PCs is that the power demands of higher-end chips will require larger batteries and drive up costs. The latest handhelds sporting the AMD Ryzen Z2 Extreme chip enable better performance with higher TDP, or thermal design power. However, those new handhelds will drain any gamer’s wallet. The most powerful version of the Lenovo Legion Go 2 costs $1,350 and the Asus ROG Xbox Ally X demands $1,000. These devices have enough juice to play some demanding games natively, but they’re not too much better than the Steam Deck when you consider their cost.

Valve’s Steam Deck, which starts at $450 for the LCD version, still has the best bang for the buck among handheld PCs, despite running on old AMD Zen 2 architecture. It won’t play all the latest AAA games at their peak, but it’s more than enough for smaller indie titles, and it’s become my favorite way to stream games through Nvidia’s GeForce Now. A Steam Deck 2 needs to offer more than just a new way to play demanding titles on the move. Valve is obviously interested in creating a gaming hardware ecosystem that can rival PlayStation and Xbox. In that way, it’s better off waiting for something to come along that non-PC gamers can actually afford.