Speaking recently with Reviews.org, Valve designer Lawrence Yang stressed that the company doesn’t intend to release iterations of the Steam Deck on an annual basis, and stated that there likely won’t be Steam Deck 2 unless there’s reason for it to exist and it’s an actual “generational leap”.

“It is important to us, and we’ve tried to be really clear, we are not doing the yearly cadence,” Yang said. “We’re not going to do a bump every year. There’s no reason to do that. And, honestly, from our perspective, that’s kind of not really fair to your customers to come out with something so soon that’s only incrementally better. So we really do want to wait for a generational leap in compute without sacrificing battery life before we ship the real second generation of Steam Deck. But it is something that we’re excited about and we’re working on.”

This isn’t the first time we’ve heard similar statements from Valve. Last year, designer Jay Shaw stated that the company was “thinking about Steam Deck 2 at all times”, but that it was “going to wait for the technology to present itself in a way that we find interesting and for the team to really want to make that leap”.

Prior to that, Valve’s Pierre-Lou Griffais suggested that it would be at least “a couple of years” before the company decided to release Steam Deck 2.

When asked by IGN how long it would take, designer Jay Shaw said, “I don’t know. It’ll be a while. I think it’ll be quite a while. We don’t have any kind of set date. I think we’re going to wait for the technology to present itself in a way that we find interesting and for the team to really want to make that leap. We’re very, very, very proud of this version of Steam Deck, and this is it. This is the one we’re the most happy with, and we think customers will be too.”

He also noted that the team is “thinking about Steam Deck 2 at all times,” but that it’s also satisfied and “this is really the kind of high end of what we wanted to do.” While a successor is likely, it could take a few years, echoing statements that Valve’s Pierre-Louis Griffais made last September.

He felt the developer was in a “pretty sweet spot” in playing all the newest titles this generation. He did clarify that the company is “working with developers on future releases” and that feedback is monitored. For now, “I think it has been pretty good on the horsepower front.”

The Steam Deck OLED is out on November 16th, with a 512 GB NVMe SSD variant costing $549.00 and a 1 TB NVMe SSD variant retailing for $649.00, while the current LCD model’s price drops to $399. Stay tuned for more details and updates on the handheld in the meantime.

At least not within the next couple of years, according to Valve’s Pierre-Lou Griffais. Speaking recently with CNBC (via VGC), he said that Valve expects the performance levels that the Steam Deck is hitting with its current hardware to be “a stable target for a couple years.”

“Right now, we’re kind of looking at this performance target that we have as a stable target for a couple years,” he said. “We think that it’s a pretty sweet spot in terms of being able to play all the experiences from this new generation and so far, the new releases are coming out with great experiences on Steam Deck.

“Obviously, we’re working with developers on future releases and we’re monitoring the feedback there but so far, I think it has been pretty good on the horsepower front.”

He also said while speaking with The Verge that having clear and straightforward for developers and consumers alike when it comes to the Steam Deck’s specs and capabilities is an important part of Valve’s strategy for the device, and that as such, you shouldn’t expect a next-gen version of the portable device in the near future.

“It’s important to us that the Deck offers a fixed performance target for developers, and that the message to customers is simple, where every Deck can play the same games,” Griffais said. “As such, changing the performance level is not something we are taking lightly, and we only want to do so when there is a significant enough increase to be had. We also don’t want more performance to come at a significant cost to power efficiency and battery life. I don’t anticipate such a leap to be possible in the next couple of years, but we’re still closely monitoring innovations in architectures and fabrication processes to see where things are going there. ”

Valve has, of course, said in the past that it’s continued development on Steam Deck since its launch with a view to releasing improved and more powerful versions down the line, and though it doesn’t seem like an upgrade will be coming just yet, it should be interesting to see exactly what it improves once it does arrive. Who knows, perhaps it’ll launch with an OLED screen as well.