I agree that it's too soon for a CPU refresh for the Steam Deck, but I disagree with the idea of thinking of it as a console. It's a PC, and PC game developers are already required to support a vast, unfathomable array of configurations far beyond what an upgraded Steam Deck would require.
Re:Van Gogh, AMD’s Steam Deck APU
by prmoustache on Monday March 06, 2023 @10:32AM
(#35042189)
It is definitely a pc but if you don't treat it as a console and start selling newer upgraded versions, it will soon be dead as a platform. It is not machine you can swap the GPU or the motherboard or upgrade the memory at will and pc game developers / companies mostly don't give a fuck about people who aren't using something at least close to the greatest and fastest unless it is a highly sold platform.
That would be a terribly unwise decision from Valve. If there is one sure thing about video games console systems, is that stability of the product is more important than outright performances. That is what makes them so successful over gaming PCs. If Nintendo or Sony was releasing a new model every 2 years and people couldn't run new games on the old releases, only a fraction of those users, the very hardcore gamers, would follow the upgrade path and most users would just leave the platforms.
The best thing that can happen is the Steamdeck stays the same for 5 to 10 years and video game developers continue making sure their games run well on it.