Source is KeplerL2, who is generally considered a reliable source for insider hardware info, particularly on AMD GPU hardware and AMD SoC for consoles.
Previously I would have personally estimated Steam Deck 2 to release mid 2026-early 2027, but the recent info about an upcoming Steam Machine made me think that maybe I should push back that estimate.
Of course even if we assume this is reliable insider info, a lot can change in couple years, so things can definitely change.
As the kids like to say … Let em cook.
It’ll come out when it’s meaningful and a big leap. They’ve said as much before.
Yup, they’ve straight up said that they’re not interested in iterative upgrades. They said they’d only consider a Deck 2 when the hardware was actually in a place that it would be a meaningful upgrade.
In the meantime, they’re focused on getting devs to actually optimize their games for the SD’s (admittedly aging) hardware. Basically, forcing devs to actually plan for Steam Deck support, instead of just shipping an unoptimized piece of junk out the door and blaming hardware limitations when nothing except the newest cards can play it. There are plenty of games that look gorgeous on the Deck, so we know it’s 100% possible to do so.
The main thing I want, besides higher performance, is higher resolution to increase readability. Do something like what Apple did when they introduced their ultra high resolution monitors - present it as a standard resolution monitor to software, but then let the OS handle stuff like font rendering at full resolution and overlay it.
That way you don’t cause a performance hit from games rendering more pixels than what’s necessary for a small screen in 3D scenes, but the detail you do need is there to see. They should work with game engine developers and get the OS side support of it upstreamed to the Linux graphics stack (presumably the game mode window manager Gamescope would be the first place to build it into). It would work in parallel to the upscaling algorithm for the rest of the frame buffer.
Stuff like puzzle games and platformers, etc, could even have game engine support for tagging certain assets and object edges and symbols for higher resolution rendering, not just for fonts, so it’s easier to see the important things. You could even do stuff like render faces specifically at higher resolution and do the rest at low res with upscaling.
Fucking seriously. They pushed out a handheld that can play AAA games on low settings. It came out ~3 years ago, so they’re on track as any other major hardware developer.