Things the Steam Deck has going for it over the PS4 are: 1. SSD (Cyberpunk 2077 no longer supports HDD's as of Phantom Liberty) and 2. a vastly more performant CPU. 

I do think it is possible on PS4, but these are major obstacles that the Steam Deck doesn't have. 

I don't think CPU would be a problem, at least when comparing CPU usage in Horizon FW vs CP2077 on same CPU/GPU combo, Horizon actually has heavier load, and HFW was on PS4. SSD on the other hand...

Steam Deck's more modern feature set likely allows it to play a bunch of games the PS4 can't. 

Steam Deck can run Spider-Man 2, Alan Wake 2, Ratchet & Clank Rift Apart, MS Flight Simulator, Black Myth Wukong, FF7 Rebirth, Indiana Jones & The Great Circle and many other games that are PS5/XS gen only. 

Now those games don't always look the greatest, but the more modern feature set makes a big difference. 

Yes, at lower resolutions than PS4. Or is Digital Foundry wrong?

https://www.eurogamer.net/digitalfoundry-2022-steam-deck-review-a-handheld-pc-capable-of-console-quality-gaming

It may take some tweaking but the results are worth it - Steam Deck absolutely can deliver console-class performance, even on demanding titles. Obviously, resolution drops from console-standard 1080p to the mobile-orientated 720p or 800p.



720p is only 44% of the pixels of 1080p and it runs 8.5% faster...

The reason those games are PS5/XS is because we're finally past the generational overlap.
And Steam deck isn't 'hampered' by requiring a minimum performance level.



Yeah it runs sort of.

If The Callisto Protocol wasn't launched on Xbox One, and Hogwarts Legacy and Jedi Survivor weren't ported to last gen consoles (and Switch in Hogwart's case lol), some mofos would have argued 24/7 about how "impossible" they were on PS4 and wanked the mighty SteamDeck to the heavens.

There are games the Steam Deck can handle (due to being more modern) that the last-gen consoles probably can't (without heavy modifications of course.) 

Alan Wake 2 comes to mind. Here is it running on an RX 580 (GCN 4.0) -- a GPU that is about 2.5x the PS4's and much more modern than it. 

Meanwhile the Steam Deck is able to play the game at a minimally playable state. Not the best in terms of visual quality and graphics, but it is at least playable. 

There are some ways RDNA2 is just going to outclass any of the GCN architectures. Mesh Shader support, is one of them. 

3. RAM (16 GB in total, at least 13 GB available for games), which allows much higher textures (and other RAM-intensive effects) than on a PS4 with 8 GB in total (5 - 6 GB available for games)

Realistically any game could be ported to PS4 if it was commercially viable even if that version of the game was seriously cutback in game features and graphic fidelity. The thing is nowadays it isn't commercially viable as its an old format and people that pay big money for games have better hardware now. Shoehorning a ambitious game into the PS4 takes time and money and that investment wouldn't be merited. Yes PS4 has limited CPU resources but the Nintendo Switch has limited graphic, CPU and memory resources and it still got games converted that were very ambitious for the format. The Steamdeck will never get such optimisations as its an open format and there are 1000s of different PC configurations. Yes the userbase will gradually work out what is the best software configuration for a certain game on steam deck but that is nowhere near the same optimisation of PS4 or Nintendo Switch. However the Steam deck has access to both PC and emulated games so has access to 100s of thousands of titles it can play including Nintendo Switch titles at full speed. The Switch 2 isn't that powerful but use of DLSS means they can upscale from a very low resolution like 360p to 1080p with great results and this massively reduces the burden on GPU, CPU and memory so it can head on compete with much more powerful formats that render at a much higher resolution. I don't think anyone would be happy with PS4 games that rendered at 360p because it can't upscale like Switch 2. If the PS4 had DLSS like Switch 2 we would no doubt had loads of 4K games that looked amazing for the console but it doesn't have that technology. The Switch 2 and original Switch both seem to be rendering at 360p as their lowest portable resolution but of course Switch 2 magically transforms that resolution to 1080p.

Yeah, Alan Wake 2 is indeed poster child for modern techniques (mesh shaders, VRS, sampler feedback...) that run poorly on older hardware (along with some of the new bad industry practices that are more and more prominent), even with RT excluded from the picture. Are those techniques  necessary for that game to look that way, at least on lower settings? Honestly, not really, they are just more efficient to squeeze more out of the same theoretical "paper" performance, so that game could, at least with lower setting and dedicated port, easily run on something like RX 580 - after all, that GPU is running Horizon Forbidden West @1080 native with medium settings at some ~45fps and Hellblade 2, which looks much better on low settings vs AW2 low, runs much better on 580 as well.

But, as you said, that would really need heavy modifications, so completely dedicated port and not just "let's dial this down", and there is obviously no financial sense to do such a thing.

Been experimenting with Doom Dark Ages on an old Dell Workstation I have with an i7 4770 (1226 single, 3918 multi in GB6)  and an RTX A1000 50W (SFF). The A1000 on paper is 2.2 times a Switch 2 docked and ~4 times a Switch 2 in handheld. I underclocked it to about 65% of its peak performance, making it about +35% Switch 2 docked and 2.5  times Switch 2 handheld. VRAM usage is at about 5.5 GB with everything set to low, system ram usage about 3 GB, resolution is DLSS Performance @1080p. My i7 4770 seems to be bottlenecking it though, so utilization is more like 40% of peak performance rather than 65%. Basically getting a constant 35 FPS with these settings. Game looks very blurry though with nasty artifacts. Quality mode eliminates many of these artifacts but drops the framerate to a variable 27-33 fps. 

Anyway, I think the game is do-able on Switch 2 given this, but it will likely be a port that requires some very tailored optimizations. I am guessing if they do achieve it, it will be a sub-540p/540p -> 1080p 30fps experience docked, and 320p -> 720p 30fps handheld. 

Initially was going to try an A400 since it is closer to Switch 2 Docked (~ 87% of Switch 2 docked performance, was going to overclock to make up the gap, then underclock to near handheld performance) but the VRAM bottleneck made it impossible. 

I wasn't expecting Doom Dark Ages to be this demanding given how well Doom Eternal runs on even weak PC's.