The Steam Controller, released in 2013 as part of the company’s Steam Machines effort, included two trackpads with haptic feedback that could be used to simulate the sensation of using a mouse.
There were approximately 1.6 million of the highly modifiable controller sold by Valve until the company decided to pull the plug on the device in 2019.
Lawrence Yang and Pierre-Loup Griffais, the creators of the Steam Deck controller, recently discussed plans for a sequel to the device in an interview with The Verge.
With a “Yeah,” Yang expressed his desire to actualize the idea. All that remains is to determine how and when.
Seeing as how that’s also something we were interested in, I expect that we’ll look into it. To paraphrase, “it’s definitely something that we’d be happy to work with a third party or explore ourselves,” he added. “Right now, we’re focusing on the Deck.”
Valve also said it has no intention of making a significant performance gap between prospective machines, and again discussed the possibility of a Steam Deck successor.
“Right now the fact that all the Steam Decks can play the same games and that we have one aim for users to understand what type of performance level to expect when you’re playing and for developers to understand what to target…” Griffais told The Verge.
I believe we will choose to maintain the current performance level for a while longer and will only consider making adjustments to the performance level when there is a substantial gain to be had, he said.
Valve has stated that it plans to continue providing support for the Steam Deck and SteamOS for the foreseeable future, calling it a “multi-generational product line.”