Valve's 2021 Steam Deck hardware can run circles around Nintendo's 2017 Nintendo Switch, but there is one point of comparison where Nintendo has had the upper hand since last year: the Switch's OLED model is just a fraction of the Steam Deck's debuted six months ago, and with OLEDs in TVs, phones, and gaming handhelds, it's pretty hard to dismiss their rich colors and deep blacks.Steam Deck just passed its one-year anniversary, and over the past year I've seen one question about the Deck come up more than any other

Valve.

The brief, polite answer from Valve's Pierre-Loup Griffais (opens in new tab) is that Valve "understands the limitations of the current technology in Deck with respect to screens."

"We also want it to get better. We are looking at every avenue," he says. But the longer answer is to replace the screen, not just ... . that there is more to it than just replacing the screen.

"I think people see something like an incremental version and assume it's an easy drop-in," Griffeth says. But the fact is, the screen is the core of the device." Everything is anchored to the screen. For a device that small, basically everything is designed around everything. It's going to be a bigger job than people assume. [We are not discounting anything. But the idea of just swapping in a new screen and done would take more than that to be feasible.

When Valve was designing the Steam Deck, the flexibility of the LCD panel was, in fact, one of their top priorities. In particular, they made sure that the backlight could be dimmed as much as possible so that the game could be played comfortably in dark areas, and that the refresh rate could be changed to preserve battery life. According to Griffe, as far as he knows, that should be possible with OLEDs, but it would require some special settings.

"It's something you have to plan ahead. When we were working on this screen we made sure that these would be supported even if refresh rate switching was not ready at release. We made sure that they would be supported even if refresh rate switching was not ready at release. So you need to keep that in mind when evaluating and choosing between possible options. But don't let the differences in screen technology, whether LCD or OLED, be a deal-breaker. It's how the entire system is designed and what is between the screen and the SOC (system-on-chip) that matters."

It is likely that the eventual successor to the Steam Deck will feature OLEDs, but after speaking with Griffais, I don't expect Valve to do an incremental update like the Steam OLED. If there is a plan, Valve is certainly playing it close to the vest.

In the meantime, Steam Deck owners who miss the colors of the OLED can at least try VibrantDeck, a great plug-in that allows you to increase the saturation of your display without turning your game into a complete Lisa Frank painting or even absolutely wild. Or you can go absolutely wild. I am not the color police.