With the Steam Deck, you can emulate just about anything. I’ve used the device to play my PlayStation 3, PlayStation 2, Xbox, and GC games
Steam Deck is a gaming beast. It can handle recent blockbusters like Resident Evil Village and even Elden Ring really well. That is thanks to its modern architecture and 16GB of LPDDR5 memory. As it turns out, the specs that make the Steam Deck so adept at handling new video games also makes it ideal for old games. Valve has built an excellent handheld emulation system. Let’s take a look at how this works. With the Steam Deck, you can emulate just about anything. I’ve used the device to play my PlayStation 3, PlayStation 2, Xbox, and GameCube games. But you can even find the Yuzu emulator, which runs Nintendo Switch games. Getting these emulators is trivial, but you’ll have to provide your own game backups. Let’s get to a walkthrough of how to get emulation set up on your Steam Deck. If you prefer a visual guide, check out the video at the top of the page. To get a PlayStation 3 (RPCS3), GameCube (Dolphin), and many other emulators for the Steam Deck, you’ll need to boot into the Linux desktop on the system. Let’s go through those steps now. Next, you should add these emulators to Steam’s gaming mode. Emulators run faster in gaming mode, and it is more convenient than booting into desktop. You will now see those emulators in the “non-Steam” tab in your library on SteamOS. But while you’re still in Desktop mode, you should take time to add your game backups. You should also hop into the emulators and set up the paths to your games within those emulators. This stuff is not too specific to the Deck — it works like it would on any PC. But then that brings up the question of how to get games onto your Steam Deck.
