The Steam Deck will perform equally well whether you’re mobile or have it docked • Eurogamer.net

The Steam Deck will allegedly perform in exactly the same way whether it’s docked or not.

In an interview with PC Gamer, Greg Coomer – who helped design Valve’s new handheld system – said the team felt it was “actually better, all things considered, to not modify based on docked status or mobile status”.

This means that players should not experience a dip in performance if they’re playing on the move, which makes it stand out from its chief competitor, the Nintendo Switch.

“We really wanted to prioritise for using it in what we thought would be the highest use case, which is actually mobile,” Coomer explained. “And so since we were focusing on that – and we chose, like, a threshold where the machine will run well, and with a good frame rate – with AAA games in that scenario.

“We didn’t really feel like we should target also going after the dock scenario at higher resolutions. We wanted a simpler design target and to prioritise that.”

ICYMI, Valve recently confirmed that the UI from Steam Deck will replace Big Picture mode on Steam.

As Ishraq reported at the time, Big Picture was released in 2012 as a console-like interface for users who plugged their PCs into large monitors and TVs while using a controller as opposed to keyboard and mouse. It became the basis for SteamOS which was used for the ill-fated Steam Machines.