The Steam Deck changed the way many people enjoy PC games. It finally made PC gaming truly portable, and Valve has done an excellent job with (most) of the rollout and launch. However, one area that most complain about with the Steam Deck is its power, as it’s not quite as beefy as other handheld systems out there. But with the release of a new booklet about the Steam Deck, Valve, and Steam, the company shines a light on the fact that this is just the first version and we’re looking at a “multi-generational product” here. What does this mean? Let’s take a closer look below.
New Steam Decks are on the horizon… with no release date set
Valve recently released the “Steam Deck Booklet,” as they call it. This was written in preparation for Valve’s handheld launch in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. It introduces Steam, the Steam Deck, and Valve to those new customers, and the company even translated the booklet to all native languages in-house.
The booklet includes background on Valve and its philosophy around creating products and hardware, an overview of Steam, the story of its portable computer, and more. However, the most important thing in the book, in our opinion, is found on page 51 (which is technically page 26 of the PDF). There, Valve talks about “The Future: More Steam Decks, more SteamOS.” It’s on this page that Valve confirms we’ll get future versions of its portable gaming system as it’s a “multi-generational product line” and they plan to “follow up on this product with improvements and iterations to hardware and software” as well as work on “bringing new versions of Steam Deck to market.” That’s right, “versions.” So, with what Valve is saying, we’ll be seeing multiple iterations of Steam Deck in the future, which is something I honestly can’t wait for.
9to5Toys’ Take
Sure, we didn’t get solid release dates, confirmed specs, or even a teaser image of what future Steam Decks will look like. However, knowing that Valve isn’t calling it quits with the first version is enough for me to hold out hope for a more compact yet more powerful model in the future. I love the idea of bringing my PC gaming library with me everywhere as I own (literally) hundreds of titles on Steam, let alone other platforms. So, with the idea that a more powerful handheld could be just ahead in the future, I’m holding out hope on bringing my entire library everywhere… and maybe retiring my laptop for travel purposes when it comes to general computing use, depending on what the new Steam Decks can handle.
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