You’ll want to tinker with the performance settings within RPCS3 itself, and also make sure the game you are trying to play has a sufficiently high performance rating with this emulator. If it’s a game that is not currently running well even on a powerful PC, the Deck won’t be able to do much with it.

Retro Game Corps is reportedly working on a PS3 emulation video for the SD. I’m watching to see what he can get running and what he has to say about the most effective settings to tweak to improve performance.

I’m also brand new to the Deck and am struggling with getting a good percentage of my (light, mostly indie) PC games working.

I’ve installed a handful of games from Epic and Amazon via the Heroic Launcher and added them to Steam. So far about half work out of the box, while the others have errors I’m uncertain how to even troubleshoot. Steredenn for example loads in a tiny box (about 1/3 the screen width) in the middle of the screen. Sable fades to a perma-white screen with music playing after advancing past the title screen.

I’ve tried ticking the force compatibility box and toggling to Proton Experimental. I’ve also looked up the games on ProtonDB, and in some cases there aren’t any tinker tips. For Steredenn for example the game is just listed as Native (but my copy is PC, not Linux native) and all the posts (under “Steam Deck”) say it runs perfectly out of the box.

So how do I go about troubleshooting and tinkering with games that should work pretty easily but don’t work out of the box?

It arrives tomorrow! Super stoked to join the club after eyeing the Deck since it was first announced.

I’m grateful for the price drop and immediately ordered a 256GB refurbished LCD. I’m a console and emulation nerd and love mostly indies. I’ve been redeeming free games from Epic, GOG, and Amazon for years and have a huge backlog of PC games I’ve never tried.

Every time I get a new handheld I legit play SMB 1-1. It’s a nice way to show my 11-year-old self how far we’ve come.

Experience the moment!

I debated it for maybe an hour, then bought a 256GB refurbished. Still waiting for the delivery! But I’m pretty thrilled that the model I wanted basically dropped $230 overnight.

Refresh throughout the day, or setup a website monitor service to get alerts.

I’m not in the UK but when I bought a refurb last week they were going in and out of stock every few minutes, all afternoon. Took me 2 hours to manage to checkout successfully!

Splasher, Light Fall, Rayman Legends, The Messenger. You might also look at Super One More Jump.

Wait for the reburbs to come back in stock, or go ebay. With the OLEDs going up for order tomorrow there should be a flood of used Decks.

I think it comes down to your own budget. I’m in the same spot in terms of what I plan to use the Deck for, and ended up going with the LCD refurb to save money. The OLED screen looks amazing, but all things considered my budget-conscious mind can’t justify $230-250 for that and the other QOL upgrades. I’ll have years of fun with my perfectly ordinary screen and 60 fps indies.

It seems like the review units I’ve seen out there are all the top tier, 1TB model. Are you anticipating something visually different about the screen and/or performance on the 512GB?

I also ordered a refurb a few hours after the announcement. It’s showing as packed but hasn’t been picked up by the carrier yet.

I’m hoping for a pickup the first half of this next week, in which case maybe I’ll get lucky and have it delivered closer to 1 week than 2 weeks after ordering.