It’s already very good, and improving practically every week.
Right now, you can play The Witcher 3 at 720p, medium settings, at a stable 30 fps on Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 handhelds. Or the same settings in Cyberpunk 2077 on Snapdragon 8 Elite handhelds.
Which is basically what it runs like on a Steam Deck, except you get better battery life, a smaller and lighter device, and the device itself is anywhere between 2 to 5 times cheaper.
Now, keep in mind 8 Elite aren’t even the best supported SoCs (8 Gen 2 is among them though), and we’re still at least a couple years away from any new Valve handheld.
And Valve has just released an ARM device with an ARM build of SteamOS.
At this point I’d say it almost doesn’t make any sense to build a Steam Deck successor on x86.
I’m not very concerned about performance. I’d be pleased with a lighter, quiter, less expensive and more battery-efficient device that reaches the same performance (something ARM promises) but I expect a very large chunk of the available PC library (Steam and non-Steam) to run on it, through the emulation layer, and through the OS compatibility layer.
Cyberpunk is almost 6 years old now and Witcher 3 released over 11 years ago (recent W3 remaster and today’s CP 2.5 update notwithstanding). I really hope those improvements keep pace and the Deck 2 can do better than medium settings 30 FPS on these.
Steam Deck 2 will do native 4k 120 fps on Witcher 3 with RayTracing enabled and max settings. I am Nostradamus and this will happen in the next 2 years.
Is emulation so good already that compatibility isn’t a concern anymore?
Hmm, kind of?
It’s already very good, and improving practically every week.
Right now, you can play The Witcher 3 at 720p, medium settings, at a stable 30 fps on Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 handhelds. Or the same settings in Cyberpunk 2077 on Snapdragon 8 Elite handhelds.
Which is basically what it runs like on a Steam Deck, except you get better battery life, a smaller and lighter device, and the device itself is anywhere between 2 to 5 times cheaper.
Now, keep in mind 8 Elite aren’t even the best supported SoCs (8 Gen 2 is among them though), and we’re still at least a couple years away from any new Valve handheld.
And Valve has just released an ARM device with an ARM build of SteamOS.
At this point I’d say it almost doesn’t make any sense to build a Steam Deck successor on x86.
I’m not very concerned about performance. I’d be pleased with a lighter, quiter, less expensive and more battery-efficient device that reaches the same performance (something ARM promises) but I expect a very large chunk of the available PC library (Steam and non-Steam) to run on it, through the emulation layer, and through the OS compatibility layer.
Cyberpunk is almost 6 years old now and Witcher 3 released over 11 years ago (recent W3 remaster and today’s CP 2.5 update notwithstanding). I really hope those improvements keep pace and the Deck 2 can do better than medium settings 30 FPS on these.
Steam Deck 2 will do native 4k 120 fps on Witcher 3 with RayTracing enabled and max settings. I am Nostradamus and this will happen in the next 2 years.
Speaking from my experiences, no, not yet.
On which device?
Ayn Thor, Steamframe, and a few Android phones.