Valve says Steam Deck can run every PC title, even next gen games

After the failures of the Steam Machine, many are wary of the promises of Valve’s upcoming Steam Deck. In a bid to assure customers of the PC handheld's impressive claims, Valve has come out with a bold statement. There's no PC game the system can't run.

Valve says Steam Deck can run everything

In an interview with IGN, Valve claimed that the Steam Deck is capable of playing any PC game currently released. Through the power of the system’s custom Zen 2 and RDNA 2-based SoC, it should keep up with the best of current-gen games.

However, unlike a closed ecosystem like the Nintendo Switch, the PC gaming library is far more volatile. With this in mind, Valve's claims that anything is possible is even more enticing. Could it even run VR?

“We were able to achieve a point where all the games we wanted to be playable at really good perf, a really good experience [ran].

The real test for us were the games that were coming out last year. They just couldn't really run very well on previous types of prototypes and architectures that we were testing. And this is the first time that we've achieved the level of performance that's required to really run the latest generation of games without problem. All the games that we wanted to be playable, really the entire Steam library, we haven't really found something that we could throw at this device that it couldn't handle.”

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The industry change is helping

In the interview, Valve explains that there were earlier versions of the Steam Deck that were far from performance targets. However, with new hardware and an industry trend of pushing higher framerates, the company has found itself in luck.

They said:

“Everything that's been coming out this year has been running without issue. This is largely an industry trend. If people are still valuing high framerates and high resolutions on other platforms, I think the content will scale well on our 800p, 30Hz target. If people start heavily favouring image quality, we might be in a position where we might have trade offs".

As of now, the Steam Deck is in a good place, but will it stay performant as the next generation starts to kick off? With titles soon to be targeting only next-gen consoles and PC hardware, the Valve handheld may not stay as hot as it is now. However, with the power of PC and a strong fanbase, the little PC portable should find itself well cared for.

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