Valve rejects “yearly cadence” of Steam Deck hardware releases to be “fair” to gamers

Valve will not habitually release hardware in annual or cyclical phases because “that’s […] not really fair to customers”.

In an interview with Reviews.org (via Eurogamer), Valve designers Lawrence Yang and Yazan Aldehayyat confirmed the company would not update its Steam Deck systems with any kind of “yearly cadence,” but instead wait for “a generation leap” in performance instead.

“It is important to us, and we’ve tried to be really clear, we are not doing the yearly cadence,” Yang said.

“We’re not going to do a bump every year. There’s no reason to do that. And, honestly, 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.

“So we really do want to wait for a generational leap in compute without sacrificing battery life before we ship the real second generation of Steam Deck,” Yang concluded. “But it is something that we’re excited about, and we’re working on.”

The statement reaffirm Valve’s commitment to the Steam Deck hardware, stating that it’s aiming for the true successor to be “a generational increase.”

An OLED edition of the handheld PC launched this time last year.