Valve has taken to advertising The Last Of Us Part 1 for their own Steam Deck advertising. (UPDATE BELOW)
As reported by PCGamesn, Valve has shared one picture on their site of The Last Of Us Part 1 mocked up on the Steam Deck.
The Last Of Us Part 1 will be available on PC on March 28, 2023, via Windows on Steam and Epic Game Store. So, it’s true that Sony has licensed their post-apocalyptic narrative shooter to Valve, but it’s not exactly an exclusive on PC.
As of this writing, The Last Of Us Part 1 has not yet been Steam Deck Verified. This piece of advertising does seem to suggest that that official verification is forthcoming, which is certainly a neat piece of advertising for the platform.
For those who aren’t familiar, the Steam Deck’s hardware is based on a variant of the Zen 2, combined with a Ryzen 2 enabled RDNA 2 GPU. This combination is not the most high end portable gaming experience you can get in the market, but it is a very capable combination.
In light of Valve’s availability issues in supplying the Steam Deck, a whole host of third parties offered their own handheld gaming devices, many of whom have Windows installed. These devices utilize the Ryzen 6800U, which is a considerable power upgrade from the Steam Deck. They will definitely get more out of The Last of Us Part 1 then the Steam Deck can.
However, these devices also cost twice as much as the Steam Deck and upwards. Furthermore, that 6800U may be efficient in terms of graphics processing, but it isn’t efficient in terms of power, which translates to high battery consumption.
So, the Steam Deck still has a huge advantage in this marketplace. The Last of Us Part 1 won’t look at its absolute best on Valve’s hardware, but the promise is that it will look good enough, and players will be able to play the game for longer. Given the Steam Deck’s size, it may be debatable that it offers a portable experience, but it will certainly be easier to load it up then to get a TV, console, and controller all prepared to play it.
We have provided extensive coverage of what Naughty Dog has added to The Last of Us Part 1 on the PC. To keep it short, this may be the definitive version of the game, over the PlayStation 5 version.
UPDATE: YouTuber ETA Prime tried running The Last Of Us Part 1 on his Steam Deck. He opines that the game can look and perform well on the console, with several custom settings, and possible optimizations down the line. However, given the base CPU and GPU power, it won’t be able to perform beyond 30 FPS, AKA, it’s not good enough to raise to 60 FPS or higher. You can watch his video below.
