This is proper expectation management.
Companies leaking their v2 plans effectively shut down sales of v1. And if there’s a long time gap to shipping v2, their revenue gets hammered. If a startup, can go out of business. Have seen it happen lots of times.
It’s called the Osborne Effect. It’s very hard to balance hyping your new thing without making your old thing seem entirely obsolete and not worth buying.
Honestly, I’m glad they aren’t in a rush to constantly release slightly improved models, unlike phone manufacturers for example. Wait a few years and make the upgrade count.
Exactly, and having a consistent platform target for developers for longer means - like a console - game development can be targeted and optimized, so players likely get better game experiences compared to yearly upgrades even if the hardware is technically better.
I have a perfectly fine Steam Deck 1 and I dont want to throw it away and replace it nor do I want to be left behind by using the “old one”.
I would like to see an alternative model/lineup tho. With the new Proton on ARM approach it would make sense to ship a model that runs on a solid ARM SoC with a similar 20-25W TDP as the base Deck model, maybe with a proper 1080p/1200p display in tow.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_video_game_consoles
Since then, home game consoles have progressed through technology cycles typically referred to as generations. Each generation has lasted approximately five years, during which the major console manufacturers have released console with broadly similar specifications.
Things might work differently for Valve due to games they sell also running on devices from other manufacturers and their hardware presumably being fully backwards-compatible. I wouldn’t be confident saying that they would work the same way.
However, if one assumes that they do work similarly, the Steam Deck came out in early 2022, (and the minor OLED update in 2023). If they intend a five-year model, one would expect 2027.
Even if I expected Valve to have a similar schedule for continued hardware releases, I would expect them to be unique in that they would be operating on Valve time.
And the industry has extended the generation cycle over time because the increased specifications aren’t generally worth it.
Now that SteamOS runs on ARM, I’m wondering if there’s an X Elite (or similar) SD2 on the Horizon. That would certainly be a huge boost in power and battery life…
“So we’ve been working back from silicon advancements and architectural improvements, and I think we have a pretty good idea of what the next version of Steam Deck is going to be, but right now there’s no offerings in that landscape, in the SoC [System on a Chip] landscape, that we think would truly be a next-gen performance Steam Deck,” Griffais continued
It sounds like what they are aiming for might not be in their alleged sub $1,000 price target.
It sounds like they are exactly trying to hit their old price point by waiting for chips to improve enough. So they can get a big performance boost for similar cost.
Ayaneo 3 with the HX370 (which does have some cool but expensive gimmicks) is $1400, Ally X with the same gpu is $1000. I think it’s gonna take a few years before they get beat in performance and price.
Might as well target dates after a projected PS6 launch. For what’s available, only Strix Halo handhelds are an impressive upgrade to me and those draw too much power to be viable
They could also achieve it with a mix of processor and battery improvements though?
If you can double the battery density (not sure if that’s feasible either?) then you can get away with less efficient silicon (within thermal limits)
