Valve has not kept the prospect of a Steam Deck successor very secret—their Proton-based handheld gaming system will eventually become a "multi-generational product." Gabe Newell (going back to early 2022) outlined some initial ambitions for the second iteration, with a teaser: "what are the capabilities that mobile gives us, above and beyond what you would get in a traditional desktop or laptop gaming environment?" One of the project's main architects, Pierre-Loup Griffais, has discussed the prospect of a "Steam Deck 2" with The Verge and CNBC—his team's progress hinges on striking an optimal balance between performance and power efficiency (on battery). The follow-up is not arriving any time soon, despite rival companies preparing alternative portable gaming experiences—Griffais said: "I don't anticipate such a leap to be possible in the next couple of years."

Steam Deck, in its current form, seems to be the main priority for the immediate future. Griffais was a keynote speaker at Tokyo Game Show 2023, so communicated with Verge via email: "It's important to us that the Deck offers a fixed performance target for developers, and that the message to customers is simple, where every Deck can play the same games. As such, changing the performance level is not something we are taking lightly, and we only want to do so when there is a significant enough increase to be had...but we're still closely monitoring innovations in architectures and fabrication processes to see where things are going." Griffais re-confirmed this stance in an interview with CNBC (at TGS 2023)—Valve wants more gamers to adopt the platform before a push into next-gen—with improved user interfaces, more development partners and an ironing out of supply chain issues: "We're looking at this performance target that we have as a stable target for a couple years."