The exact quote:
It is important to us, and we’ve tried to be really clear, we are not doing the yearly cadence. We’re not going to do a bump every year. There’s no reason to do that. And, honestly, from our perspective, that’s kind of not really fair to your customers to come out with something so soon that’s only incrementally better. So we really do want to wait for a generational leap in compute without sacrificing battery life before we ship the real second generation of Steam Deck. But it is something that we’re excited about and we’re working on.
Was it ever intended or fit for that? It’s 2.5 years old, where modern games 2.5 years ago that much less demanding than modern games today?
2.5 years ago there were a lot more games still targeting last gen consoles as their minimum baseline. Newer games that are current gen consoles only tend to fare a lot worse on steam deck.
I think the goal was to be able to physically run some version of modern AAA titles when it came out. Although generally, those titles would be downgraded graphically and run at a low frame rate, making it a less than ideal situation for those with alternative options.