CES season has kicked off, bringing with it a flurry of hardware news, leaks, and broken embargoes. Hours before AMD’s press conference, some presentation slides slipped out early detailing the company’s Ryzen Z2 processors, which are APUs targeted at the gaming handheld space.
The leaked slides showed images of popular handheld consoles like Steam Deck, ROG Ally, and Legion Go, along with phrases indicating “explosive forecasted growth” and more OEMs adding designs to the market. The news sent prominent outlets into a frenzy, with many reporting that AMD had stealth-announced the Ryzen Z2 for upcoming systems from ASUS, Lenovo, and Valve.
However, Valve’s Pierre-Loup Griffais swiftly shut down the rumor on his Bluesky account, confirming that Valve is indeed working on a Steam Deck 2 but has no concrete plans to release it soon. According to previous statements, Valve prefers to wait for a generational leap in compute without sacrificing battery life before releasing a new generation of Steam Deck.
The current Steam Deck is still the flagship user experience for handheld PC gaming, but its age is starting to show with an increasing list of unplayable games. Lenovo, MSI, and Asus already have products slightly more powerful than Steam Deck, indicating that Valve needs to launch a Steam Deck 2 to retain its dominance beyond 2025.
While we can’t rule out the possibility of AMD developing a groundbreaking, battery-sipping semi-custom APU design in partnership with Valve, it’s unlikely to use the same Zen and RDNA technology as the Ryzen Z2 lineup. The question remains: what is Valve waiting for before announcing a Steam Deck 2?
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2025/01/06/sorry-valve-just-silenced-all-those-steam-deck-2-rumors