Proton may be a vital component of the Steam Deck, but it extends far beyond just Valve’s handheld. That is to say, this update doesn’t say much about the future of the Steam Deck. There’s some interesting context surrounding this update, however.
Nvidia is reportedly working on an Arm-based PC platform that combines a GPU and CPU into a single chip, and it will apparently be ready to launch next year. Up to this point, AMD hardware has dominated handhelds like the Steam Deck and Asus ROG Ally X, and Intel has dipped its toes in with the MSI Claw. But we haven’t seen an Nvidia-based handheld yet.
If we see an Nvidia system-on-a-chip (SoC) capable of features like DLSS 3 Frame Generation, that would make for a compelling handheld gaming PC. If nothing else, adding support for DLSS 3 in Proton gives Linux gamers more options to play, and it also lays the groundwork if we ever see an Nvidia-based handheld in the future that leverages Proton.
Before rushing to conclusions, we’re reading several layers into a relatively simple update here. Valve has said it’s waiting for a signficant hardware improvement before releasing the Steam Deck 2, and although it’s possible that design could use an Nvidia chip, there’s no reason to believe Valve will break from AMD at this point.
