Steam Deck designers told The Verge that Valve does not intend to improve the next-generation Steam Deck’s functionality, but rather work to improve its range and display image quality. However, Valve may consider a major upgrade once the computing architecture has changed significantly.
Steam Deck designer Pierre-Loup Griffais said, “I think we’ll choose to keep this level of performance for a longer period of time and only consider changing the performance level if we have to see significant gains.”
Steam Deck comes with a custom Aerith chip, but many games don’t yet run smoothly. The system features four Zen 2 cores with 2.4 to 3.5 GHz frequencies and an RDNA 2 GPU with 512 stream processors from 1.0 to 1.6 GHz.
Steam Deck designers Lawrence Yang and Pierre-Loup Griffais said they are more excited about the improved endurance and display in the next Steam Deck handheld.
“Now that all Steam Decks can play the same games, our goal is to give users an idea of the level of performance they expect when playing games and for developers to know what they are aiming for …… Having a spec like this is valuable,” Griffais said.
While PC gamers may not be too happy with upgrades like Steam Deck, it’s actually a pretty normal practice in this industry to keep hardware specs up. For example, Nintendo has so far failed to launch the “Switch Pro” with an enhanced chip, but the Switch has been upgraded with a better OLED display.
