Waiting for the Steam Deck 2 rather than buying an Asus ROG Xbox Ally? Rumor suggests you'll need to be very, very patient

Enligt Steam Deck-designern Lawrence Yang kommer Steam Deck 2 inte att släppas än på ett bra tag. (Image credit: Future)

A rumor claims the Steam Deck 2 may not be here until 2028
However, this feels like tentative speculation for a couple of reasons
It's entirely possible that we might be in for a long wait for the Steam Deck sequel, though

The Steam Deck 2 might not arrive until 2028, or that's the latest theory floating down from the rumor mill regarding the sequel to Valve's handheld.

KitGuru noticed that Kepler has again dropped another rumor via the Neogaf forums (there've been a few hardware-related nuggets this week), and it's a very short and not-so-sweet revelation that: "Steam Deck 2 is 2028".

The comment came in a post that's actually about the Asus ROG Xbox Ally, when somebody commented about buying one of those - the portable arrives in October - weighed against the prospect of Valve bringing out something better in the near(ish) future.

Kepler quickly put paid to the idea that the Steam Deck 2 might be even remotely on the horizon. If the leaker is correct, we are going to be waiting three years for the next take on Valve's gaming portable - with it arriving six years after the original Steam Deck debuted - but that is, of course, a significantly sizeable if as I'll discuss next.

Photo of Steam Deck handheld console — (Image credit: Future)

Analysis: Speculation drawn from AMD, not Valve?

Obviously, this is just a rumor, and the nature of it - a throwaway one-liner in a forum post - should give more than a brief pause for thought.

As KitGuru points out, Kepler probably didn't tap a Valve contact for this info - though we don't know that for sure, it seems likely to be the case. This is because Kepler primarily deals in GPU (or CPU) rumors and so the likelihood is that they're basing this on information drawn from an AMD roadmap - which pertains to the expected chip to be used as the engine of the next Steam Deck.

So, that makes this speculation feel a littler shakier, but that said, Kepler has proved to be one of the more reliable leakers for GPU info - so I wouldn't dismiss this nugget out of hand, by any means.

Valve is already rumored to be working on a Steam Deck 2 - which is hardly a surprise - but seemingly the development road could be a long one. Back in 2023, a year after the Steam Deck launched, the expectation was a next-gen version of Valve's handheld wouldn't arrive for a few years from then - meaning people were hoping for 2026, not 2028.

If this rumor is true, what it also indicates is that Valve is planning on making the Steam Deck 2 a huge uplift with performance, with a much beefier SoC inside - the hardware available in 2028 is going to be a lot beefier, of course. And that aligns with previous chatter suggesting the company doesn't want an incremental release with the sequel to the Steam Deck, but a big stride forward.

All that said, I would underline that we should be very cautious around this speculation for now.

You might also like...

Darren is a freelancer writing news and features for TechRadar (and occasionally T3) across a broad range of computing topics including CPUs, GPUs, various other hardware, VPNs, antivirus and more. He has written about tech for the best part of three decades, and writes books in his spare time (his debut novel - 'I Know What You Did Last Supper' - was published by Hachette UK in 2013).

You must confirm your public display name before commenting

Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.