Griffais told IGN that the company isn’t content with an iterative upgrade. While Valve is “hard at work” on the Steam Deck 2, he asserted that it could still be a while before it can be a justifiable upgrade to the original handheld.

“If you look at our hardware projects over the years, you can draw a straight line from the original Steam Controller and Steam Machine to Steam Deck, to everything that we’re announcing and shipping this year. And we expect Steam Deck 2 will be a lot of the same, where a lot of what we’re doing here will be learnings that build up to it.”

Well, that could mean better battery life from a machine that’s infamous for running out on you after a session of play. However, as designer Lawrence Yang said in 2024, the company isn’t keen on yearly upgrades for the device, instead waiting for a “generational leap in compute without sacrificing battery life.”

So while the Steam Deck 2 is definitely a thing, it probably doesn’t have the tech to be a genuine upgrade over the Steam Deck. It’s always better to release a console that does the job better than the ones that came before it, and we’re happy to be a little patient. On the bright side, at least the Steam Controller has a release date of May 4th and retails for $99. Check out the official overview video from Valve here.

The Steam Controller Puck is definitely a highlight, and it’s an effective way to combine wireless functionality and charging in one ultra-portable device. All it needs is a USB connection to your PC, and your new Controller is ready to go. Simplicity and seamless use look like key pillars of the controller’s design, and we’re all for it.

Of course, the new dual touchpads, grip buttons, and customizable gyro sensors are given their due, and we’re honestly impressed by just how much you can do with them. The magnetic thumbsticks are another highlight, and we’re expecting a distinct absence of drift from them, although we might eat our words on that one. Time will tell.

Running out of battery charge on the controller? Simply slot it over the Puck, and you’re all set to charge it up for another extended session of play. It’s all quite convenient, and we’re going to get some serious mileage on this one when it finally arrives on May 4th. Though it retails for $99, the Steam Controller looks like it matches up quite well to the DualSense, although that still has haptic feedback and adaptive triggers in its favors.

Thankfully, Reddit users managed to spot the review before it was taken down, and screenshots can be found online, complete with text revealing the May 4th launch date for the Steam Controller.

Along with text from the review itself, another Reddit user was able to grab all the pictures that were published as part of the review. Along with typical product shots of the Steam Controller, its USB cable, and charging puck that also acts as its wireless receiver, one picture indicates that the controller weighs 292 grams. There are also comparison photos with the back of an Xbox controller, as well as an older photo of the original Steam Controller.

It is worth noting that there is still no indication of when Valve’s pre-built Linux-based gaming PC—the Steam Machine—will be coming out. However, since the company had confirmed in the past that it would be bundled with a Steam Controller, it had likely planned to launch the controller well in advance, if not alongside, the Steam Machine.

As for the pricing, as our report had noted, the $99 price tag of the Steam Controller makes it the most expensive one out there. The DualSense, for comparison, is priced at $74.99. The Nintendo Switch 2 Pro Controller gets a bit closer to Valve’s, with its $89.99 price tag.

The Steam Controller, along with the Steam Frame and the Steam Machine, was unveiled back in November. The controller is set to be a major evolution over Valve’s first attempt, which was launched in 2015 before being discontinued in 2019, and will be based on similar ergonomic designs as the Steam Deck. This means that, alongside all the buttons and analogue sticks that gamers might be used to, it will also include a pair of trackpads, one on each side, as well as four extra buttons on its back.

Other features include support for six-axis gyro, as well as the ability to swap out parts in case they start wearing out. The Steam Controller will also come packaged with a magnetic puck that can stick to its back to charge its battery.

Valve had originally planned to launch its new slate of hardware in early 2026. However, global memory shortages have caused the company to push back its plans. Back in February, the company confirmed that it had to “revisit our exact shipping schedule and pricing,” while also noting that it is planning to launch all three machines in the first half of the year.

“Our goal of shipping all three products in the first half of the year has not changed,” explained Valve. “But we have work to do to land on concrete pricing and launch dates that we can confidently announce, being mindful of how quickly the circumstances around both of those things can change. We will keep you updated as much as we can as we finalize those plans as soon as possible.”

Among the many details revealed is the $99 price. This would make it the most expensive controller, beating the PS5’s DualSense by $25, but it’s seemingly worth the cost. The Steam Controller features two trackpads, which allow for much easier scrolling, and received praise for feeling intuitive.

It also offers a six-axis gyro, four rear grip buttons and improved face buttons and D-Pad over the Steam Deck’s. You also get a dongle that serves as a charging puck. As for the complaints, you can’t customize the thumbsticks or swap out the faceplate. Swapping out the battery is also noted to be difficult, and, horror of horrors, there’s no audio jack.

Overall, the positives seemingly manage to outweigh the negatives, and given the sheer hype over the Steam Machine family, you can expect the Steam Controller to sell like hotcakes. All that remains is for the company to announce a release date.

This includes full controller support with appropriate input icons, the ability to bring up the on-screen keyboard when needed, a lack of compatibility warnings, and potential launchers being navigable with a controller. There’s also support for the Deck’s default resolution of 1280×800 or 1280×720, appropriate default settings, legible text, and good support for Proton, including for anti-cheat systems and any other middleware.

Aside from getting Steam Deck Verified, the update also addresses frame rate drops that players might have experienced whenever they use the scope of a sniper rifle. For more details, check out the full patch notes below.

Death Stranding 2: On the Beach was released on PC just last month after having spent several months only being available on PS5. The PC release made a strong debut, peaking at 57,682 concurrent players. While Kojima Productions hasn’t revealed too many details about sales, Alinea Analytics estimated that it had sold 425,000 copies on Steam in its release month. This, combined with a previous report indicating 1.4 million sales on PS5, would bring total sales of the title up to over 2 million.

Shortly after the PC release, lead level designer Hiraoki Yoshiike spoke about the more fast-paced nature of the storytelling in Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, thanks to world-building being toned down, and how it was done this way because “Kojima wanted more people to enjoy the game all the way to the end. This was an order he provided.”

He went on to discuss how, since much of the world-building had already been done with the original Death Stranding, with the sequel, the studio could focus on telling the ongoing plot rather than having to divert their attention to more world-building elements.

For more details about the PC release of Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, check out our review.

Death Stranding 2: On the Beach update 1.3 patch notes:

• Death Stranding 2: On the Beach is now Steam Deck verified.
• Fixed hitches and stutter that could occur when zooming in with sniper rifles.
• Implemented performance optimizations.
• Fixed multiple rare crashes and improved overall stability.
• Addressed various minor graphics-related bugs.
• Various input and user interface related improvements and bug fixes.
• Implemented various text and localization related fixes.

“They were targeting 2028 [as far as I know], but the whole RAM/NAND situation could delay it,” wrote KeplerL2. “Also, since they don’t have a semi-custom SoC, unlike the PS6/Xbox, if it gets delayed, it could end up with better specs.”

Since its launch in February 2022, the Steam Deck has proven to be quite successful for Valve, and recent trends in memory prices have even left the company to deal with greater demand than it can supply.

The handheld features a quad-core AMD CPU running on Zen 2 architecture with 8 threads, a clock speed of between 2.4 GHz and 3.5 GHz, depending on the software. It’s paired with an RDNA 2-based GPU with eight compute units clocked between 1 and 1.6 GHz, and 16 GB of unified LPDDR5 memory either clocked at 5500 MT/s or 6400 MT/s, depending on whether you have the LCD or OLED version of the Steam Deck.

Valve’s thoughts on making a new version of the Steam Deck have largely revolved around the company waiting for a major generational jump for hardware, not just in terms of raw specs but also energy efficiency. In October 2024, Valve designer Lawrence Yang said there was no reason to work on yearly iterations of the handheld.

“It is important to us, and we’ve tried to be really clear, we are not doing the yearly cadence. 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.”

In more recent times, the company has had its hands full with trying to launch the Steam Machine, Steam Frame, and new Steam Controller, which were unveiled back in November 2025. While there hasn’t yet been any solid launch window announced for the three products, the company is still trying to release them in 2026, and that “More updates will be shared as we finalize our plans.” Hardware delays have largely been blamed on memory and storage shortages.

Valve noted that the attorney general had first reached out to the company in early 2023 where it had made similar comparisons. The studio also said that its players “don’t have to open mystery boxes” in order to play its games. “In fact, most of you don’t open any boxes at all and just play the games—because the items in the boxes are purely cosmetic, there is no disadvantage to a player not spending money.”

As for the lawsuit itself, Valve has said that it has “serious concerns” about the changes the New York attorney general wants the company to make to its games. Among these changes is making loot boxes and their contents non-transferrable.

“We think the transferability of a digital game item is good for consumers—it gives a user the ability to sell or trade an old or unwanted item for something else, in the same way an owner can sell or trade a tangible item like a Pokemon or baseball card. NYAG proposes to take away users’ ability to transfer their digital items from Valve games. Transferability is a right we believe should not be taken away, and we refuse to do that.”

The company has also called out the attorney general’s proposal to gather “additional information” on each one of the players “on the off-chance someone in New York was anonymizing their location to appear outside of New York, such as by using a VPN.” This could lead Valve to implement invasive technologies for the purposes of this data collection, which would include age verification, despite payment processors already having age verification built into their systems.

“We respect New York’s right to determine the laws governing behavior in the state. We will of course comply if the New York legislature passes laws governing mystery boxes—something it has not done despite considering the issue a few times,” wrote the company. “Such laws would be the result of a public process, presumably with input from the industry and New York gamers. The type of commitments the NYAG demanded from Valve went far beyond what existing New York law requires and even beyond New York itself. It may have been easier and cheaper for Valve to make a deal with the NYAG, but we believed the type of deal that would satisfy the NYAG would have been bad for users and other game developers, and impacted our ability to innovate in game design.”

As for the attorney general’s comments attempting to draw correlations between video games, violence in the real world, and the effect this might have on children, Valve has said that they serve as “a distraction and a mischaracterization we’ve all heard before.” Closing things out, the company makes a note of “many studies” highlighting the “beneficial impact” that games have on their players, and that it will ultimately wait for a court’s decision on the matter rather than trying to settle with the state of New York.

A game must run at 1080p and 30 FPS to be verified for the Steam Machine, just as it does on a Steam Deck. That comes straight from Valve at GDC 2026. That doesn’t mean the upcoming gaming device from Valve is incapable of going higher than those numbers, but it is the minimum a game needs if it aims to be verified for the platform.

The Steam Frame is a tad more demanding if you’re going to be running your titles off its native chip, with a 90 FOS requirement for VR titles. 2D titles only need 30 FPS at 720p, though. There was also talk about offline mode for games right off the bat, optimizing titles for lower-specced machines, and improving controller support, all of which was advice aimed at developers looking to release titles on SteamOS.

We’re looking forward to getting our hands on the upcoming Steam Machine and Steam Frame, and we think we’re not alone in our excitement to check out Valve’s way of taking the fight to the PlayStation and Xbox in the near future.

However, in a Steamworks Development post, Valve said it would be shipping “all three products this year. More updates will be shared as we finalize our plans.” Memory shortages were once again to blame, but it seems that storage is also in short supply – a knock-on effect caused by the former.

While this doesn’t necessarily mean a delay past the first half of 2026, Valve’s wording feels very deliberate here. Regardless, the shortages don’t appear to be going away anytime soon, so you have to wonder if the new Steam Hardware will even launch this year. Time will tell.

Perhaps the most disheartening part of all this is that the long-rumored Half-Life 3 was allegedly slated to launch with the new Steam Machine. It was reportedly planned for Spring 2026, likely to coincide with the initial release date. Regardless of whether this is true or not, journalists like Insider-Gaming’s Mike Straw claim that the sequel, arguably the most anticipated of all time, is indeed real.

There haven’t been too many rumors lately, though, so stay tuned for updates.

In South Korea, the 512 GB model will be priced at ₩898,000, and the 1 TB model at ₩1,048,000. Taiwan will see prices raised to NT$18,980 for the 512 GB model and NT$22,480 for the 1 TB model. Currently, no price hikes are planned for Hong Kong.

The announcement came from Komodo Station—the company in charge of selling the Steam Deck in the Asian markets. And while no explicit reason has been noted, it comes in light of “rising logistics costs that have continued since the [Steam Deck]’s launch, as well as recent fluctuations in the exchange rate environment,” according to the report (via machine translation).

Back in February, Valve had started issuing a warning on the official listing for the Steam Deck OLED. The company also confirmed that production on the Steam Deck LCD 256 GB had been stopped, with any available units being leftover stock.

“Steam Deck OLED may be out-of-stock intermittently in some regions due to memory and storage shortages,” wrote Valve. “Steam Deck LCD 256GB is no longer in production, and once sold out, will no longer be available.”

Valve has been seeing many of its hardware plans affected by global memory shortages. The company confirmed that its plans to launch the Steam Machine, the Steam Frame, and the new Steam Controller had been pushed back, with the new release window being the first half of 2026.

“Our goal of shipping all three products in the first half of the year has not changed,” explained the company. “But we have work to do to land on concrete pricing and launch dates that we can confidently announce, being mindful of how quickly the circumstances around both of those things can change. We will keep you updated as much as we can as we finalize those plans as soon as possible.”

In the meantime, Sony is also seeing adverse effects of the RAM shortage, with a report from last month indicating that the company might push the launch of the PS6 back as far as 2029. Nintendo is also reportedly keeping an eye on memory prices, with a price hike possibly coming later in the year. Neither company has made any statements, however.

Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa had spoken about keeping an eye on market conditions like memory shortages and trade tariffs back in January. At the time, he said, “We aim to address this by advancing component procurement over the medium to long term.”