Steam Deck host. Steam
Steam Deck, a handheld game console owned by game developer Valve, will come out on February 15, 2022. Steam Deck designers Lawrence Yang and Pierre-Loup Griffais accepted an exclusive interview with The Verge a few days ago, explaining that Valve has worked on Steam Deck in the past 9 months, including hardware such as batteries, fans, and buttons, as well as software such as operating systems and game compatibility optimization. At the same time, it also mentioned the progress of the next-generation console Steam Deck 2 that may be launched in the future and the development vision of the home console Steam Box.
Steam Deck is currently developing the SteamOS 3 operating system for use by other PC manufacturers. Yang said: “After the launch of SteamOS 3, we hope that more handheld developers can use this operating system to launch their own products, and we also hope that console manufacturers can use this to make home video game consoles.” Griffais added that the team only deals with Steam. Deck has already exhausted its energy and has no time to promote the development of Steam Box, so releasing SteamOS 3, it will be more feasible at this stage for third-party developers to develop Steam Box.
In addition, the Steam Deck team is currently developing the next-generation handheld game console, Steam Deck 2. Steam Deck 2 is optimized for on-screen performance and battery life. The battery hardware part of Steam Deck has been criticized by fans because the size of the battery slot does not fit the battery itself, and it is fixed through glue, making it difficult to replace and disassemble. The Steam Deck team said that the original design reserved space for battery expansion, but it is not ideal and will be improved. However, the customized Aerith SoC developed by Steam Deck is more energy efficient and has better battery life than other handheld game consoles that also use AMD 6800U GPU and provide the same visual experience, which is a big advantage.
In order to provide players with a smoother and richer gaming experience, Steam Deck will also continue to develop the mixing technology between the main system and individual applications, or between applications, game sound effects, music and chat communication voice. At the same time, Steam Deck will continue to improve the connection audio delay of Bluetooth headsets. If players want to share the game progress of the same game account on Steam Deck handhelds and PCs through the cloud, they can synchronize updates through Dynamic Cloud Sync launched by Steam Deck. However, this synchronization function is mainly set by the developers of each game, and Steam Deck cannot directly provide it.
In the future, Valve may allow Steam Deck users to share different parameter settings for playing various games in the community. Previously, due to the setting of the data writing method, the microSD memory card of many Steam Deck users was easily damaged. Valve will also adjust the data formatting method to prevent the SD card from being damaged due to excessive writing. Valve is also considering helping developers bring touch-based mobile games to Steam Deck consoles.