Valve developer Pierre-Loup Griffais clarified the company’s performance expectations for the upcoming Steam Deck handheld gaming device, and from the sound of things, the official 30 frames per second (fps) at the display’s native 800p resolution was a little conservative.
“The ’30 FPS target’ refers to the floor of what we consider playable in our performance testing; games we’ve tested and shown have consistently met and exceeded that bar so far,” Griffais tweeted. “There will also be an optional built-in FPS limiter to fine-tune perf vs. battery life.”
Griffais’ comment arrived shortly after Valve revealed the 30fps target. That isn’t necessarily uncommon for handheld devices—many Nintendo Switch titles run at that frame rate when the console isn’t docked—but it may have surprised those who rushed to pre-order the Steam Deck.
The additional information about Steam Deck performance also followed the reveal that all of the games shown in IGN’s reveal video were running off an SD card, which addressed concerns about read/write speeds, and Valve saying it’s worked to avoid thumbstick drift issues.
Valve should have plenty of time to share more details about the Steam Deck before it reaches consumers. The company said it plans to start shipping the device in December, but the estimated delivery times for pre-ordered units have already slipped into late 2022.
