In a brand new publish on the Steamworks Improvement weblog, Valve has written about all of he issues the corporate achieved through the earlier yr. Among the many celebration of assorted new options for Steam as a platform, the corporate additionally spoke about its {hardware} and software program enterprise.
Going by the publish, Valve sees the longer term for its {hardware} just like the Steam Deck, together with software program like SteamVR abd the Linux-based SteamOS is vibrant. This comes off a yr of improvement the place Valve targeted fairly a bit on SteamOS in its efforts to make the working system platform agnostic.
Valve’s investments into Linux have additionally been paying off largely because of its contributions to the Proton software program compatibility layer. For context, Proton is what permits video games developed primarily for Home windows to run on Linux. Due to this, builders don’t should exit of their solution to have their video games be playable on Linux, and by extension, SteamOS and the Steam Deck.
In line with the publish, the Deck Compatibility program has ranked round 17,000 video games all through Steam as both “Playable” or “Verified” for the Steam Deck. The hand held gaming system has additionally been fairly profitable, with round 330 million hours of playtime on Steam all through 2024 being attributed to the Steam Deck.
“The way forward for {hardware} at Valve is vibrant. Steam Deck, SteamOS and SteamVR are delivering tons of worth to gamers and devs, constructed on prime of a decade of investments into UI, linux compatibility, enter assist, customized silicon, movement monitoring, shows, battery effectivity, and extra,” wrote Valve.
“Each developer making PC video games advantages from these investments, and gamers can now get pleasure from their PC video games in so many new contexts. {Hardware} groups at Valve are delighted to see Steam in the lounge, the airport, the yard, and wherever else prospects wish to deliver their library of PC video games.”
Valve’s efforts at spinning off SteamOS as a hardware-agnostic working system has additionally been paying off. Earlier this yr, it revealed its collaboration with Lenovo to launch some variations of the Lenovo Legion Go S that may be operating on SteamOS.
Even with all of this success during the last yr, Valve has beforehand been adamant that it’s in no hurry to hurry out a follow-up machine to the Steam Deck. The newest occasion of this happened in January. Shortly after AMD unveiled its new processors, a few of which might profit the hand-held gaming PC kind issue, Valve’s Pierre-Loup Griffais dispelled any potential rumours of a brand new Steam Deck that makes use of AMD’s new Z2 chip.
“There may be and might be no Z2 Steam Deck,” posted Griffais on social media on the time. “Guessing the slide was meant to say the sequence is supposed for merchandise like that, not asserting something particular.”
Again in October, Valve designer Lawrence Yang additionally spoke in regards to the firm’s intentions to not exchange the Steam Deck with a more moderen mannequin. Yang stated that there have been no plans of a yearly iterative launch of the Steam Deck, and that the one manner a Steam Deck 2 would come into existence can be if there have been a motive for it to be made, which largely comes right down to it needing a “generational leap” in efficiency and battery life.
