Valve won't be releasing a Steam Deck with more performance until at least 2025. Given the smartphone market's reputation for disappointing incremental updates, this is the right choice. Valve should, however, throw gamers a bone with a Steam Deck 1.5.
  • .:\dGh/:.@lemmy.mlEnglish
    12·
    3 years ago

    That argument that any SoC upgrade wouldn’t be noticeable right now is partially true. A better SoC can be fabricated, but that would offset any cost Valve would willing to accept given the current Steam Deck pricing.

    It’s better to wait for what AMD creates. Surely they’re preparing new RDNA and ZEN architectures, plus TSMC new nodes. Those guys have an special sub-node to target low power devices, being the latest the one Apple eats every iPhone launch.

    If they pushed a new Steam Deck, it would be marginally better and most folks wouldn’t be so compelled to upgrade. Also, you fragment your development team, now you have to maintain two devices.

    Yeah, it’s better to wait a good timing when AMD and TSMC aligns, then you push forward and you offset the prior 4 year old model.

  • conciselyverbose@kbin.social
    8·
    3 years ago

    Annual phone refreshes make perfect sense.

    You don’t have to buy a new one every year. But a stable production cycle is very useful at the volume Apple moves. Spikes and troughs for a multiple year cycle would be much more difficult to manage, and if you do actually need a phone at the end of a 3 or 5 year production cycle, you end up with a product 2 or 4 years of development behind what you could have, without even getting the benefit of being able to get it at the price of a phone a couple cycles behind.

    The steam deck is functionally a console. It doesn’t have the volume to manage the same frequency of new devices.

    • LazaroFilm@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      3 years ago

      Agreed and consoles have been shown to benefit from a longer cycle. Let devs get accustomed with the device and find ways to optimize games and engines for the specific configuration. I could see a mid cycle refresh with a lite version or an OLED/AMOLED screen (like the switch had) while keeping the same architecture.

      • conciselyverbose@kbin.social
        2·
        3 years ago

        I was going to make that point, but I don’t think the steam deck gets quite the same benefit on optimization. It could, but it needs a lot more volume before devs seriously target it.

        More because they can just sell it on PC and a lot of us will tolerate it pushing the hardware past its limit anyways. A PS5 version has an explicit level of responsibility that the Steam Deck doesn’t, unless they’re actively advertising it. (That’s not deck verified, because developers don’t decide that.)

      • conciselyverbose@kbin.social
        2·
        3 years ago

        Yes, they absolutely do. It would completely murder the supply chains to have such massive droughts in demand, and it would be extremely hardcore fucking over customers who had to have a phone in the period near the end of those terrible cycles by immediately making their phones obsolete.

        If Tim Cook announced tomorrow that he had a proven cure for cancer and that he was also cutting the phone cadence from one year to five, he should be fired the same day. Annual updates are the only valid approach.

  • Shin@lemmy.worldEnglish
    5·
    3 years ago

    Honestly all I want is a Steam Deck Mini. Fuck bigger and more powerful, I want a small indie/AA game machine that’s easier to carry around and use as a handheld outside of the house. The Steam Deck has been primarily a bed machine for me.

  • missingno@kbin.social
    5·
    3 years ago

    I don’t need a higher spec Steam Deck, most of what I play is all 2D indie games anyway. What I really want to see someday is a Steam Deck Pocket in a DS-sized form factor.