Valve make no profit on the consoles themselves right? And if the steam deck profit model of making their money off of games applies to games bought on any handheld, then why not let the other companies have the higher end market and all the research and development costs that making a new console needs. Especially because each new generation would need a refresh to stay on top.(more r and d costs) So why wouldnt valve just keep making their current steam deck that runs stuff well enough for them to keep selling games.
This aged well haha
Because power isn’t mature enough.
Look at the “Steam Deck Killers” - ROG Ally, Legion Go. What’s their biggest issue? Battery life.
So what do these people do when they actually want more than 45 minutes of portable play? They turn down all the options that they bought the “Deck Killer” for in the first place. Back to 720p … back to throttled power … You know … Like the Deck.
Valve knows what they are doing.
Tbh I never could understand why they don’t just put bigger battery in these things. Like 100 Wh, that would be enough for 4 hours of demanding games, or 10+ hours for lesser games.
Battery = weight. Cost. Heat considerations. The list goes on and on.
They’re not going to release a high-powered device because they want to wait until the tech is actually there- tech that allows them to squeeze more power out of lower wattages. That’s the whole point of devices like the Deck and the Switch- getting as much performance as possible out of low-powered hardware.
Another thing that would help Valve release a more powerful Deck sooner is better battery tech, which also isn’t really there yet afaik.
But, until one of these things is achievable, we won’t see a new Deck.
I think they don’t make higher end deck because it makes no sense. They wanted a portable device, and to be portable you need balance between performance and power consumption. More performance -> Consumes more -> Needs a bigger battery -> weight more, less portable.
Bigger screen resolution -> needs more performance -> …see above.
Current steam deck has a great balance of screen size/performance/battery/weight for current level of technologies. In a bunch of years there may be better batteries and more energy-effective APUs/CPUs/GPUs, and then it will be possible to make a better deck without compromises.Well, I think I have to apologize. I was totally wrong with my estimate, and Valve actually released new version of deck today (what a coincidence, right?): https://store.steampowered.com/sale/steamdeck_2023
I was not completely wrong, since speed remains the same, and screen resolution too, but they managed to make a bigger battery and lower consumption at the same time, and that’s pretty impressive, because they literally made deck EVEN MORE portable. And OLED screen is a nice addition for those who love to play outside.
It’s clear Valve above all else has pushed aggressively to make the Steam Deck affordable. That’s why you see all the competing handhelds being substantially more expensive, and that’s also why Valve omitted certain upgrades that make sense, but would bump the price up.
Valve clearly also cares about the ecosystem, which is why they don’t want to release a new, faster unit every year. It would leave existing customers behind. They clearly want to go with more of a console generations kind of thing, both in terms of support and affordability.
Making a good product is a challenge, making a product good and cheap is very hard, and requires some hard choices and trade-offs. That’s why there aren’t metal threaded inserts, that’s why the screen isn’t Full HD, that’s why the APU has four cores and not six, that’s why the battery isn’t bigger, the list goes on.