The exact quote:
It is important to us, and we’ve tried to be really clear, we are not doing the yearly cadence. We’re not going to do a bump every year. There’s no reason to do that. And, honestly, from our perspective, that’s kind of not really fair to your customers to come out with something so soon that’s only incrementally better. So we really do want to wait for a generational leap in compute without sacrificing battery life before we ship the real second generation of Steam Deck. But it is something that we’re excited about and we’re working on.
I honestly think (hope) valve should take a shot at a genuine console. I would absolutely love something that just WORKS like steam deck, but unlike my PS5 syncs with my steam library and can easily transition to my deck with no fuss. Library compatibility, graphic customization, capable of functioning as a one stop media device for the TV room. I feel like the steam machines were too early and too short sighted/compartmentalized, but now that so many games are coming to PC, valve could take everything the PlayStation 5 did right, while removing all the bullshit that drives people nuts.
A new take on the Steam Machine could potentially knock Xbox out of the market in their current state, and I’m okay with that.
Steam machines were a great idea that the market wasn’t quite ready for, and were too niche at the time. The steam deck has proved people of all technical levels are ready and willing to embrace a non-windows OS, and don’t care what it is as long as it can easily give them access to their content. I have an Nvidia shield, a PS5, a steam deck and a desktop PC. My game library is disjointed and I rarely play anything on the PC, because there is no good way to make it convenient. The vast majority of the time I use my steam deck, I’m sitting on my couch, just like my PS5 .
A steam console could unify everything, cut my devices while simplifying my experience and giving me way more control over the invasive bullshit that comes with streaming and android devices. That has so much upside and value to me, it’s hard to even put a price tag on it tbh.
But why limit this to console only, when this will be a full featured PC that can do so much more. Plus there are plenty of open source streaming tools like Moonlight and sunshine that can stream your game directly to your TV. You have Jellyfin for media streaming etc.
Because I don’t need or want it to do any of that, nor do most people that purchase a console. I want it to be a steam-friendly PS5 replacement, and serve the exact role that a console serves. A steam-friendly replacement would have the same OS features that deck has, and allow a similar degree of customization. You are not the use case if you don’t understand that.