PS5 exclusive Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart will officially run on Steam Deck
By Sean Hollister, a senior editor and founding member of The Verge who covers gadgets, games, and toys. He spent 15 years editing the likes of CNET, Gizmodo, and Engadget.
If you buy something from a Verge link, Vox Media may earn a commission. See our ethics statement.
Originally, Sony and Insomniac claimed that PS5 exclusive Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart wouldn’t even be possible without the console’s blazing-fast SSD. But not only is the game now coming to PCs with traditional hard drives — it’s also going to be playable on the Steam Deck.
Insomniac just tweeted that the game is officially Steam Deck Verified, and sure enough, it’s displaying that way in Valve’s storefront, too:
This isn’t a huge surprise: Sony has been a fantastic friend to the Steam Deck, effectively making it the de facto successor to the PlayStation Vita by bringing its biggest games to the portable PC.
But again, Rift Apart was supposedly a PS5 exclusive for reasons — and even the game’s minimum PC system requirements originally suggested you’d need a desktop Radeon RX 470 or better for 720p resolution at 30 frames per second when they were revealed two weeks back. Those desktop graphics cards aren’t directly comparable to the Steam Deck’s integrated GPU, but benchmark charts suggest they’d be a tier above in raw performance.
Perhaps Rift Apart has been particularly well optimized for the Deck’s custom AMD “Aerith” chip? Maybe it relies heavily on AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution and actually runs below 720p but with intelligent static upscaling.
Or — I hope it isn’t this one — maybe its graphics have been nerfed like The Last of Us Part I on Deck, which is similarly Steam Deck Verified and now runs smoothly but looks worse than it did a
Read more on theverge.com
