In releasing the upgraded Steam Deck OLED, Valve has specified that the new and improved handheld should still be considered part of the first generation of Steam Deck. Answering the question of when we can expect to see a true Steam Deck 2, Valve has said that it doesn't expect to produce a new iteration of the device for at least a couple of years.

That answer comes down to available technology, with Valve engineers explaining that the tech to significantly improve on the current Steam Deck just doesn't exist yet. Speaking to Eurogamer, Valve hardware engineer Yazan Aldehayyat said, "Obviously we'd love to get even more performance in the same power envelope, but that technology doesn't exist yet. That's what I think we'd call a Steam Deck 2.0."

"The first Steam Deck was the first moment in time where we felt like there was enough GPU performance in a portable form factor that lets you play all your Steam games," Aldehayyat continued. "We would love for the trend of perf-per-watt to progress rapidly to do that, but it's not quite there yet."