Valve’s new Steam hardware announcements—a revived Steam Machine desktop-slash-console, a standalone Steam Frame VR headset, and a refreshed Steam Controller—are all anyone’s talking about right now. But none of them would have such high profiles without the Steam Deck, Valve’s smash hit handheld. So then, where’s the Steam Deck 2? Still coming but not any time soon, says a Valve representative.
That’s the same thing we’ve been hearing from the company for over two years, even as we approach four years since the Steam Deck landed, and even as would-be competitors come out with newer and more powerful hardware. Despite the original AMD Zen 2-based Deck getting a little long in the tooth and struggling to play the newest, most demanding PC games, Valve software engineer Pierre-Loup Griffais says that the company is waiting for a more dramatic upgrade in hardware before giving the handheld a true sequel.
In an interview with IGN, Griffais says, “The thing we’re making sure of is that it’s a worthwhile enough performance upgrade to make sense as a standalone product. We’re not interested in getting to a point where it’s 20% or 30% or even 50% more performance at the same battery life. We want something a little bit more demarcated than that.” While keeping a close eye on the latest chips—presumably including AMD offerings like the Ryzen Z2 Extreme—Valve apparently hasn’t found anything that would make sense for a true follow-up to its flagship handheld.
The Steam Deck’s relative lack of power is going to get a very stark highlight when the new Steam Machine lands in “early 2026.” It’ll be running a custom AMD Zen 4 6-core processor and a similarly custom discrete graphics card with an RDNA 3 design with 8GB. That’s not enough to take down the latest gaming laptops or desktops, but according to Valve’s own promotional materials, it’ll have “six times the power” of the Steam Deck with its APU-based integrated graphics.
In the meantime, it’s possible to get the Steam Deck’s most important feature on other hardware. SteamOS now comes as the official pre-loaded operating system on at least some models of the Lenovo Legion Go S, and Valve publishes official builds for other devices like the Asus ROG Ally. Bazzite, a popular gaming-focused Linux distribution, is available for even more devices. It’s considered a sort of “unofficial” SteamOS, leaning heavily on Steam and emulating a lot of its interface.
But if you’re waiting for a newer, more powerful portable game machine from Valve, you’ll be waiting a while. Taking Griffais at his word and absent any earth-shattering new developments in the chip industry, I’d be surprised to see a new model before 2027.
