Is the Steam Deck getting outdated soon? Should I wait for the next gen?

me, who bought the steam deck primarily to play roms of games from 30 years ago: never had a problem so far.

It depends, a lot of modern AAA games run fine but a good amount of them are very unoptimized and run poorly on the Deck.

Valve said not to expect a hardware refresh soon since newer chips are more expensive and not that much faster, just look at the handheld PCs selling for ~$900 that are only 25% faster.

There are plenty of benchmarks online so you can check if the games you want will work properly or not.

I feel like people have gotten Stockholm syndrome from phones with new generations every year.

Current hardware still works fine. If you have frame troubles, lower settings and mess with your battery/performance profiles.

Do not solve the problem by offering to give companies another 500 of your dollars.

(If you’re playing your Deck at home and have a beefy PC, though, you can always stream from your PC to your deck for better performance! On most networks, there’s virtually 0 latency! Highly recommend.)

Get a Steam Deck OLED. Just do it. It is currently and will remain for a very long time a very capable device.

I actually kinda HOPE they don't release a new generation for a good long while, so devs have some pressure to target it for new games, which also means that those new games will remain playable on other older hardware as well.

If you are looking for an affordable device to play AAA games well on with no issues, get a ps5.

If you are looking for a hand held to play indie titles and the plethora of older games available I'd go for the steam deck.

I think it'll be a while until we get a hand held experience like the steam deck but with AAA capable hardware.

Is the Steam Deck performance struggling with new AAA games?

It did that on day 1. It's a mobile device. You have to temper your expectations.

I'm guessing/hoping not because most game developers would optimise the games for the Switch 2 and Xbox Series S which have similar performances as the Deck.

The XBOX is not going to have similar performance. The Nintendo is actually quite a bit more performant. But more importantly the games on these devices are going to be specifically designed and optimized to run on a specific piece of hardware.

I think 30 fps (consistent) is perfectly fine, and I don't mind medium details.

It obviously depends on the game but newer AAA titles are going to struggle to hit 30FPS on 800p/low.

If you want something with more performance you should get the Legion Go (non S) or Ally X and run Bazzite on it.

Should I wait for the next gen?

Valve is very quiet about these things. I don't think anyone saw the OLED model coming. There were no leaks or rumors. Just boom, one day there it was. So probably no one knows and anyone who says they do is probably lying.

I dont think it will be out of date anytime soon. Once you reach the realization AAA games are just lazy copy pastes of old AAA games, you also realize older AAA games run just fine on deck. Games that maxed out pre rtx cards run great on a deck, which is fucking insane considering they required cards as big as steam deck. The performance is mind boggling on the deck. If you want to play aaa slop on max settings with raytracing, Id say you need to wait for gen 2 which would be better at it considering graphics have practically stopped evolving.

My crystal ball says buy one now.

Is the Deck going to be your first / primary gaming device?

I got my Deck primarily for indie games, 10-30 year old games, or other generally “light” / casual games to play on the go or while watching a show with my partner.

For more demanding games, I’ll run them on my gaming PC and stream to my Deck via Sunshine / Moonlight / Moondeck. This has the added benefit of very low power consumption, meaning that instead of a ~2 hour battery life I get 6 or more.

The added benefit here is that a lot of games seem to be shipping increasingly unoptimized. Things that might have finnicky performance on my 3840 x 1600 monitor run silky smooth when I squish them down to 1920 x 1080 to stream to the Deck, usually with maxed out settings.

In the context of how I’m using it, Steam Deck is probably never going to be obsolete.

If you’re considering it as your primary device and primarily want to play modern AAA games, you should probably be spending at least 2-3x as much on a laptop or desktop. For that use case, Steam Deck is more appropriate as a companion device.

I wouldn't be concerned.

We're at a point in portable technology where increased performance means decreased battery life and makes the system need to be larger and less comfortable to hold (makes it release more heat, which has to go somewhere).

I do not believe there is enough demand to expect a larger, hotter, SteamDeck with poorer battery life to be released soon, or maybe ever.

The Steam Deck runs games at PS4-level graphics fairly well. It will definitely struggle with newer AAA games if they don't have graphics options low enough for the Deck.

Waiting on a next generation portable Linux machine is a win win situation. Unless you die in the next year.

The next gen steam deck likely isn't coming out for quite awhile still, so it's probably not worth waiting for next gen.

Performance wise, the Steam Deck does struggle to run new AAA games if they're poorly optimized, use UE5, or have mandatory ray tracing for lighting. It's still possible to play most of these games, but it will depend on your tolerance for graphics quality or your willingness to install performance mods. There's also no shortage of good games to play, slightly older AAA games generally work flawlessly and nearly all AA/indie games run great. I have enough good games in my library where I could never buy another game and always have something good to play.

The switch 2 in portable mode has nearly identical power to the Steam Deck, so if it sells anywhere close to Switch 1 I think we'll see a lot of games target being able to run on it. The switch 1 was far enough behind modern platforms to not be worth optimizing for, for most AAA games/devs. But the switch 2 and steam deck generally have enough power to run new games at an almost acceptable level, and that makes optimization a much more appealing target.

Also worth considering is local streaming. If you have a decent PC/PS5 you can stream games to the deck. It can be a good compromise for the games that don't run great natively.

My brother has a Lenovo Legion Go (the original one, not the S). I am definitely in envy of the big display, the higher refresh rate, and the more powerful chip. However it's a bit ehh in terms of ergonomics. It also runs windows but that's irrelevant because you can install steamOS.

There's a good chance I'll get a Legion Go next and stick steamOS on it unless we see a steam deck 2 soon that's bigger and punchier. I know we all love our retro and indie games, but it is nice to be able to play more demanding games from time to time.

Here is my opinion. I absolutely love playing oblivion on my gaming laptop with RTX4080. It looks gorgeous and so do a lot of games.

That said, I'd rather play on the deck with somewhat less graphics and chill on the couch after a long day of work. I just love the portability. Performance is okay for most games (it even plays oblivion okayish with reasonable graphics). A lot of games are optimized pretty well for it.

I just see it as an open source switch you can do and play anything you like on. I have tried windows on it too but personally it has no benefit for me so I use steamOS.

Games I play on it: Oblivion remastered Borderlands 3 Risk of Rain 2 Elden Ring GTA V

I also stream from my PlayStation 5 to my deck with chiaki4deck.

It works imho best for games in the 2014-2018 time range. Newer games work fine but can run at 30-40 fps. The UE5 Games I have tested run only with a lot of upscale (lords of the falling in particular) but still playable.

I don't play retro games. I have the OLED. I don't feel like it's outdated. I don't care about FPS and I play some AAA games.

If you aren't too sensitive to a bit of input lag, you could keep your laptop around and stream the more demanding games over steam link. Streaming these demanding games will also significantly increase battery life, but I don't think it will work away from home. Most games run quite well if you drop the settings (outside of those using intrusive anticheat), and it runs lighter games very well.

Decks went from GDPWin with intel HD 615 integrated graphics, running desktop windows in 2016 (we were amazed it could run 2011's Arkham City 25 fps low (definitely playable! lmao)) to Steam Deck where people are still reasonably posting about it having console parity.

RE "outdated soon": this is a $350 handheld x86 computer with an APU powerful enough to drive complex 3d games at 720p. People are going to be buying Steam Decks until they stop making them. Capability and performance per $$ is extremely good for numerous use cases, including people who are gaming like OP.

RE devs optimizing for SD/Switch2/XBS: i hope OP is right? definitely where non-AAA studios are going to be aiming, but AAA studios have weird corpo masters who rarely operate in ways that would make sense to cool people.

That's a pretty personal opinion but I'm a Switch owner and if there is one thing I don't miss on it, it's AAA games. Not because I dislike AAA, but because I think in handheld mode I really preferred games with simpler graphics, like Mario games (2D and 3D), sidescrollers, the top down Zelda games or (S)NES games. I really had a hard time when I tried Breath of the Wild and ended up playing it in the dock almost completely. I think it's a real missed opportunity that the new Pokemon games aim for 3D and open worlds because it not only hurts the games performance, but for me also the playability.

I'm interested in switching to a Steam Deck but I don't think I would play visually complex games on it. That's what my PC is for. But I don't know if that's just me or if other people feel the same.

As the Steam Deck isn’t new and is apparently struggling with some AAÀs, that’s why I got a used Steam Deck 2 months ago to run alongside my PS5.

I really don’t regret the move as I can play every future AAA I could want on the Playstation and so many games (including older AAÀs) on the Steam Deck.

For me it’s the perfect combo at under 1000.-(around 1000$).

Another benefit to waiting for the next iteration of handhelds is that the price of current ones will probably drop

The thing that I would keep an eye out for is if Valve ever does a refresh with a VRR panel. With VRR, you don't need to have "so much excess GPU power that it's impossible to miss a rendering deadline".

It’s already outdated for that because the hardware is weak. If what you want is AAA games, just buy a ROG Ally Z1E, it’s much better for your use case. Buy it used.

But I do need to point out that AAA games are trash and you should reflect on your life choices if that’s all you care to play.