I’m pretty sure most here expected improved cooling, not an entirely new device.

The SteamDeck isnt a console, its a PC. You literally have generational updates in the desktop CPU space where the only changes are efficiency and higher clock rates, even if marginal improvement.

Unlike consoles, SteamDeck OLED isn’t going to cap frames or frequencies to maintain parity. It will push those as high as it can, like all PCs do.

“But bro, only 5% improvement, why u mad?”

For handhelds, its not just fps (where even a seemingly marginal change can mean the difference between inconsistent 25fps to locked 30 - which is a huge perceptual difference) but also battery life, which with the steam deck an extra 10wh can lead to more than an hour, which is a 25%Plus improvement. These all add up to a significantly improved experience for the same price. Not just a revision.

To pretend it’s simply a display and efficiency change is being dishonest.

To put it simply, if they tried to make a steamdeck 2, they couldn’t do much better than this. OG steamdeck already competes with the latest ryzen apu at reasonable wattage. Resolution is optimal (people criticized DeckHD for increasing resolution). Now make it more efficient, increase battery size by 25%, give it high refresh OLED, and faster RAM in an APU and you have a new, upgraded machine, not just a refined version of the original.

I’m still going to get one, but sucks for those who got the steamdeck with the understanding that there would be no upgrades, just revisions till at least 2025 per statements from Valve

If valve never said anything, then yeah it is what it is, but they did and should own up to it since its simply not a revision, like it was heavily implied. There were plenty of posts here where people asked if they should wait and got the reply “why?, valve said nothing major until at least 2025”

Literally people here and on discords thought any revisions would be better cooling (the mythical black backplate) and at most more efficient APU.

Definitely not a bigger battery (biggest among the major handhelds) definitely not faster ram, and most definitely not an OLED for the same price.

If you don’t want Valve to become a scummy company, like many other cherished companies in the past, you have to call them out for scummy practices like this. If valve didn’t say anything about 2025 earlier, then fine, but unfortunately they did and if it mislead any, which I’m sure they did, then they should do something.

I say all this because fans who turn a blind eye to obviously bad practices and then ask “oh what happened” when a profit focused company does the inevitable are the most annoying people on Earth. I like valve, please don’t let a mistake become a malignancy.

Offer trade ins.