A higher end Steam Deck could be developed in the future

The Steam Deck finally launched late last week after months of anticipation from fans. Early reviews of the device appear to be positive, but even so, Valve are already looking into the idea of a Steam Deck Pro.

As part of the Steam Deck’s launch celebration, Valve founder Gabe Newell sat down with IGN to discuss the potential of the handheld Linux device. The Steam Deck currently offers 3 different models – with the main differences being the size and speed of the internal storage (and an added etched glass finish on the screen of the 512GB version).

According to Newell, this highest end model – costing £569 – has outsold the base £349 model – which only comes with 64GB of slower memory – and has led to the team at Valve researching whether they “should continue to look at higher-end configurations” for the Steam Deck. Going into further detail regarding this mentality, Newell said:

“That's the great thing about the PC market. Right? That it just continues […] Like a year from now, AMD is going to have better parts. Right? A year from now, all the component suppliers are going to either expand capacity, expand performance, or reduce costs. So, we're absolutely going to ride that as hard as we can. That's part of the thing about being in the PC space is everybody's essentially driving everybody else's price performance improvements over time.”

Early impressions of the Steam Deck have been positive, but it is seemingly not without its issues. While software can be fixed over time, the Steam Deck’s hardware could do with a slight upgrade – particularly to its display. With even Nintendo using OLED panels on their most recent Switch iteration, the Steam Deck’s LCD display looks rather primitive by comparison, and with it being a handheld device, the display is one of its most vital components.

Unlike the Switch – which certainly could benefit from a performance boost – the Steam Deck’s RDNA 2 internals are future-facing. Hopefully the external hardware elements however, eventually receive an upgrade.

KitGuru says: What do you think of Newell’s Statement? Have you bought a Steam Deck? What improvements would you like to see in a Steam Deck Pro? Let us know down below.

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