PS5 exclusive Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart will officially run on Steam Deck

PS5 exclusive Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart will officially run on Steam Deck

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 game’s default graphics configuration performs well on Steam Deck
This game’s default graphics configuration performs well on Steam Deck
Screenshot by Sean Hollister / The Verge

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.

Image: Sony

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 decade ago on the original PS3.

All Valve is promising with the Steam Deck Verified badge is that it’s spot-checked the game — it launches and runs relatively smoothly at the developer’s default settings.

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