My personal opinion is that the frame is a bit of a Trojan horse for widening the hardware they can run games (via Steam) on. With folks playing more and more indie and lower power requirement games, the rise of retroid pockets and Android gaming in general has taken off, and initiatives like gamehub lite have made it possible to run even Skyrim on these low power handhelds.
On the same token, the amount of performance per watt that Apple has been able to get out of custom arm based silicon is astounding. Valve has said they wouldn’t release another steam deck unless it represented a generational leap. That sort of leap would be something like the intel —> m1 that Apple produced.
What’s most exciting for me, is better steam support on multiple architectures. I think what’s most exciting for Valve, is their software and storefront running on more devices and providing a better experience than ever before. From VR to the deck to the desktop to the living room, I think their strategy at this point is pretty clear.
This is true. But I’m more looking at the work they’re putting in on the Frame as a bellwether. It seems odd they’d support a tiny platform for them with an ARM cpu (that matches typical Android phone hardware). It’s possible they just want to increase the compatibility layers in that space in a general sense.
I guess I’m looking at the M5 chip 2x’ing the performance (single core) vs the M1 variant from 5 years ago almost exactly, and over that same frame the best desktop cpus have seen a 1.5x’ing. A mobile chip does better single core than desktop chips from AMD and Intel (caveats here). The perf per watt is absurd.
To be clear, I don’t think this will happen quickly. I expect another 2 years before the next steam deck arrives. I just think it’s interesting that valve is supporting a non x64/x86 architecture in a product category here and have a hard time believing it’s a total dead end for them.