Steam has plenty of new hardware on the way in 2026, but the company has been quieter about the inevitable successor to the Steam Deck. While the original Steam Deck model released over four years ago, Valve has established a desire to avoid rendering it obsolete too quickly, meaning that a 2026 launch was always unlikely. The latest leak, however, has fans concerned about how long they might have to wait.
According to insider KeplerL2 on NeoGAF, the Steam Deck 2 was planned for a 2028 release, but could end up being delayed due to "the whole RAM/NAND situation." This concern refers to the recently skyrocketing prices of memory and storage, which have been heavily affected by their heavy demand in AI data centers.
NeoGAF user Slimboy Fat suggests that the situation looks grim, arguing that there may be "nothing on the horizon" that fits the hardware requirements Valve would like for a Steam Deck successor. Diffusionx, meanwhile, argues that Valve could be "out of the hardware game for the foreseeable future" thanks to the difficulty caused by the current market.
At the moment, it's also difficult to know exactly how hardware prices will develop in the next couple...
