Valve designer Lawrence Yang and engineer Pierre-Loup Griffais talked about the Steam Deck on March 7th, one year after shipping in Europe and the United States.Rock Paper Shotgunanswered an interview. In it, he mentions the next generation of Steam Deck.
Steam Deck is a portable PC game console developed by Valve. A 7-inch display is placed in the center, and a full-size analog stick, various buttons, and a trackpad are installed. SteamOS is pre-installed, Windows games are operated by a compatibility layer called Proton, and users can play compatible games owned by Steam. Steam Deck began shipping in Europe and the United States in February last year, and in Japan in December last year.
The Steam Deck features a custom AMD APU consisting of a Zen 2nd generation CPU and an RDNA 2nd generation GPU. However, in UMPCs for games from other companies, the higher performance AMD Ryzen 7 6800U is already mainstream. Then, I wonder if there will be a successor machine with updated specs on the Steam Deck.
Regarding this point, Valve’s Lawrence Yang said in an interview that the first year of Steam Deck was a success, and comments that led to a deeper consideration of how this product could be improved. . On top of that, it will be for a few years before a true Steam Deck next-generation console with a large horsepower boost appears.
It’s a sign that Valve isn’t in a rush to change generations of Steam Decks. In the same interview, Pierre-Loup Griffais also commented that Steam Deck could be a solid target for game developers throughout the current generation. He also said that many of the popular games work well on the Steam Deck and have received positive feedback from users, so it seems that the current specs will still be competitive for a while.
Griffais also said that optimizing for the Steam Deck is technically more tricky than adjusting the UX, but there are benefits for game developers. If we can achieve a comfortable gameplay experience with Steam Deck, we can expect smooth operation even in various PC environments, in other words, we can improve the overall experience of players.
By the way, Mr. Yang and Mr. Griffais used to be foreign mediaThe VergeIn an interview with , Steam Deck mentioned the possibility of introducing a successor machine that does not involve performance improvements first. It seems that the aim is to avoid the confusion of game developers due to changing the specs in a short period of time, and it is said that the successor will prioritize improving the battery and display. If a new model of Steam Deck appears, it seems that such minor changes will be made first.
Steam Deck is a domestic authorized distributorKOMODONow on sale. At the time of writing, all 64GB/256GB/512GB models are in stock and available for immediate purchase.
