According to Gabe Newell’s team, in a few years, we may see a portable PC (as the Steam Deck is one…) that can reach 4K resolution.

“I think it’s often extra interesting at Valve because so many of us want to treat even this device like a platform that can just be upgraded at will, and we can just, you know, why not upgrade it every three months? That wouldn’t be the best service that we would do for game developers or customers if we tried to operate that way.

We’re already looking ahead to the future because we believe this is a product line that will have a long life, so of course, we’re thinking about what would we build next, and we’re starting to make plans in those directions. But there is not a design for Steam Deck 2. Still, we’re thinking along those lines and having conversations already about where would we draw the line for our next iteration of the device,” Greg Coomer, a Valve designer, told in an interview with Rock Paper Scissors.

“Achieving 4K and having a display that runs at that resolution wasn’t a design target for us,” Coomer added regarding the model they announced this summer. However, Lawrence Yang, his colleague, added: “And it wouldn’t have been worth the trade-off. Technically, it probably is possible to create a device of this size that can output at 4K…” So they weren’t sure about how this model would have worked today (not to mention how it would have run the games, Coomer added).

“What would that device look like? How long could it run those games? How hot would it get? It’s a lot of balancing, and we’re happy with where this is right now. You know, technology marches forward. Maybe in a year or two, we actually will have something that becomes more possible,” Yang said.

You can play on a higher resolution than 1280×800 on the Steam Deck that will begin shipping in December: you just need to use the dock or an HDMI-to-USB-C adapter; depending on the game, the frame rate might tank.

Source: WCCFTech