Valve’s Steam Deck handheld has just been released, and officials are already planning Steam Deck 2. In an interview with Edge Magazine, Gabe Newell, Valve’s co-founder, and president, said that the Steam Deck initial generation was designed to be playable with the current big games and that Steam Deck 2 will pioneer more content in the mobile scene, thus going beyond the traditional desktop or laptop gaming experience.
These statements were provided to EDGE magazine, with whom Newell spoke about Valve’s surprise when the most expensive version of Steam Deck turned out to be the most popular “by far”. “That’s why we always like to bring something out and ship it. We learn a lot from it, and it helps us formulate our thinking for Deck 2,” Newell says. ”
Steam’s future plans for its console also hint at VR
Valve has already planned a long future for Steam Deck, as Newell sees it as a “permanent addition” to PC gaming. “The second iterations are more about, what capabilities does mobile give us beyond what you have on a traditional desktop or laptop?” – Newell said when asked about the possibility of a new wave of Steam Decks in the future.
What’s interesting here is that Valve’s vision for the Steam Deck seems to be tied to the current pursuit of VR gaming, with Newell explaining that the Steam Deck represents “a powerful powerhouse with battery capacity that could eventually be used in VR applications.” This makes sense, as current VR devices are expensive and useless. Perhaps Deck 2 could offer an advantage here in the future.
Whatever Steam’s plans are for the future of its handheld console, they seem to point to a wide range of possibilities. Right now, the first thing to do would be to get an even and reasonable distribution of Steam Deck on a global scale. After that, we could talk about an improved version. But that seems to be in the very, very distant future in Steam and Valve’s plans.
In the meantime, we’re still hoping to try it out soon. For now, we’re content to read the various reviews and we hope it arrives in Argentina as soon as possible because the waiting is killing us!
Source: PC Gamer