Steam Deck 2 is already being planned out by Valve, and it will be even more powerful

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"What are the capabilities that mobile gives us"

Steam Deck
(Image credit: Valve)

Valve is making plans for Steam Deck 2, and it sounds like it will aim to offer owners an even more powerful portable PC gaming experience with new features you won't find on a desktop.

Co-founder Gabe Newell was up front about Valve's plans for a Steam Deck followup in an interview for the latest issue of Edge Magazine. He said some of Valve's thinking is being guided by how the most expensive version of Steam Deck was by far the most popular, but Valve is also looking ahead to how it can make further use of the portable form factor.

"The first step is to let you play the great games that exist today. The second iterations are going to be more about: what are the capabilities that mobile gives us, above and beyond what you would get in a traditional desktop or laptop gaming environment?"

Newell added that Valve is excited to see what other companies do with the software it's created to power Steam Deck's portable PC gaming experience. But it's also considering its own ways to push the medium forward in ways that can't be done on a desktop, with one example being the computer vision used for VR.

"One of the things [Steam Deck] represents is battery-capable, high-performance horsepower that eventually you could use in VR applications as well," Newell says. "You can take the PC and build something that is much more transportable. We're not really there yet, but this is a stepping stone."

Connor Sheridan
Connor Sheridan

I got a BA in journalism from Central Michigan University - though the best education I received there was from CM Life, its student-run newspaper. Long before that, I started pursuing my degree in video games by bugging my older brother to let me play Zelda on the Super Nintendo. I've previously been a news intern for GameSpot, a news writer for CVG, and was formerly a staff writer at GamesRadar.