Valve thinks the Steam Deck is future proof, but expects to make new generations

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This might not be the only Steam Deck we get

Steam Deck
(Image credit: Valve)

Valve’s upcoming handheld console the Steam Deck is “future proof” however this doesn’t mean that the company won’t consider other iterations in the future. 

Speaking with IGN, hardware engineer Yazan Aldehayyat commented on the Steam Deck’s RAM which utilizes the LPDDR5, which according to Aldehayyat: “I think [Valve] might actually be one of the first products to showcase this new memory technology. So in that sense, that gives [the console] a lot of future-proofing.” 

This doesn’t mean that Valve doesn’t want to make any improvements though, as Steam Deck designer Greg Coomer adds “assuming that customers agree with us that this is a good idea, we expect not only to follow up in the future with more iterations ourselves but also for other manufacturers to want to participate in the space.”

To add to our confidence that the Steam Deck will be around for a long time, Valve recently announced that the console can handle the entire Steam library. A claim that is echoed by Valve developer Pierre-Loup Griffais who in the same interview said: “Everything that's been coming out this year [that we've tried] has been running without issues.”

Another reason for its potential longevity is down to “industry trends” Griffais continues, “If people are still valuing high frame rates and high resolutions on different platforms, I think that content will scale down to our 800p, 30Hz target really well.” However, he explains, if people start favoring image quality, then the company may be in a position where “we might have trade-offs, but we haven't really seen that yet.”

Valve is currently offering three different versions of the Steam Deck: The $399/£349 model which features 64GB of eMMC storage and comes with a carry case, the $529/£459 slightly upgraded version which has 256GB of faster NVMe SSD storage, the same carry case, and an exclusive Steam profile bundle. 

For $649/£569, avid PC gamers can go all out and get a Steam Deck with 512GB of fast NVme SSD storage, anti-glare glass, an exclusive virtual keyboard, a custom carrying case, and the Steam profile bundle as well. 

Find out why those lucky enough to have pre-ordered the largest model of the Steam Deck, may come into even more luck come Q2 2022. 

Hope Bellingham
Hope Bellingham
News Writer

After studying Film Studies and Creative Writing at university, I was lucky enough to land a job as an intern at Player Two PR where I helped to release a number of indie titles. I then got even luckier when I became a Trainee News Writer at GamesRadar+ before being promoted to a fully-fledged News Writer after a year and a half of training.  My expertise lies in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, cozy indies, and The Last of Us, but especially in the Kingdom Hearts series. I'm also known to write about the odd Korean drama for the Entertainment team every now and then.