Wanted to talk about this a bit. I’ve seen some things showing how well along translation layers have gotten with both proton from windows based games and x86 apps running on ARM. I think it’d be a huge improvement for something like standby time. Although I’m not sure how well it’d be for power efficiency while gaming since it might use the same amount of power for similar performance regardless. Maybe better for low complexity games like balatro or vampire survivors?
I would guess steam deck 2 will be x86, I’m assuming that valve is already working on hardware for it. We do know that Valve is working on a new VR headset that will be ARM based though, and that they’re working on an ARM compatibility layer for it. If the early testing of the VR headset is promising enough I could imagine valve pivoting to make the next Deck ARM based, but that will probably cause a longer delay before we get a Deck 2.
What’s the source on the VR headset being ARM based? I must have missed that
There were previous leaks that were covered here about it, here are two articles on it:
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2024/09/valve-appear-to-be-testing-arm64-and-android-support-for-steam-on-linux/
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2021/09/deckard-is-apparently-the-codename-for-a-possible-standalone-valve-vr-headset/
As with anything like this, it’s not 100%, but it’s pretty much confirmed that valve is working on getting x86 vr games to run for ARM hardware, which is enough for most people to assume that an ARM VR headset is coming.
An assumption is not knowing a fact.
It would be stupid for Valve to not at least to explore possibilities but to say that we know that Valve is working on an ARM VR headset is not truthful.
I’d recommend looking at the articles I linked, I probably should have refreshed my memory on them better before commenting.
In addition to knowing that valve is working on compatibility layers for running x86 on arm devices, there was also a steamVR update 9 months ago contains files for an ARM device code named deckard. There’s probably more relevant leaks too, I think some renders of deckard controllers got leaked at some point as well.
GamingOnLinux is a shitty spam blog and not a reliable source. We saw Proton-ARM and Waydroid in SteamDB and those could just be internal research that might never see the light of day. That’s it. Everything else is conjecture.