Steam Deck’s next model would focus on improving battery life, screen

The Steam Deck was our favourite console at the time it launched in February. It’s easy to see why the Steam Deck is so appealing. Imagine if your Steam games could be played on the move, using a mobile device that has the same processing speed as a PC. Valve released over 90 Steam Deck updates since then. They fixed bugs and improved the players experience. Now, the real question is: What future updates Steam Deck users can expect?

In a recent interview with The Verge, Steam Deck designers Lawrence Yang and Pierre-Loup Griffais went into detail on the features they’re prioritizing, along with what a second-gen Steam Deck might look like — noting that they’d focus on upgrading the screen and battery life.

Valve has called the Steam Deck a “multi-generational product,” saying that it plans to “build new versions to be even more open and capable than the first version of Steam Deck has been.” Yang and Griffais told The Verge that improving the screen and battery life are priorities in future hardware revisions.

As for potential power upgrades, Griffais pointed to the benefits of maintaining a consistent target for developers, suggesting that at least the next model of the Steam Deck won’t offer improved performance. “I think we’ll opt to keep the one performance level for a little bit longer, and only look at changing the performance level when there is a significant gain to be had,” he said.

Steam Deck updates currently in the works fall into two categories, according to Yang: “things we want to fix, and things we still want to make.”

Right now, the Steam Deck’s battery is difficult to access. In the current design, it’s glued. Valve is already working on “a change to the geometry of the adhesive, making the battery easier to loosen,” Yang said. It would be great to make the battery more accessible and easy to replace, as batteries wear faster than other components.

Additionally, Valve is working on a feature to adjust the audio mix between various apps, which would allow players to, say, turn down a game’s volume to make it easier to hear friends on Discord. While Valve may be open to adding mobile apps to the Deck. Griffais & Yang said that they would need to inform players that these games can only be accessed via touchscreens.

What about the sequel to the original, but now sadly defunct, Steam Controller? “We want to make it happen,” Yang told The Verge, but he added that the company’s current focus is on the Deck.