Late last Friday, Valve’s recently-announced Steam Deck system went up for pre-order. As is the case for virtually every piece of new hardware these days, problems quickly arose as fans hurried to place their orders. There was the usual trouble with traffic coming to Valve’s website, and scalpers made their presence known too. Even so, people were mostly able to get their orders in. This time, the biggest issue is just simple availability.

The initial release date for Valve’s Steam Deck is set for sometime in December 2021, so fans who got their pre-orders placed were probably expecting to see their consoles come around that time. However, it seems that many will be waiting significantly longer than that. Some customers have reported estimated ship dates as far back as Q3 2022, quite a long time to wait after pre-ordering something. However, it looks like this time it’s not totally Valve’s fault.

The ongoing semi-conductor shortage has made just about all consumer electronics difficult to produce and even more difficult to acquire. Everything from phones to even most cars use these vital, difficult to produce components, so there just isn’t enough to go around. So, while Valve could (and probably will) stockpile some units for launch, they simply can’t make them fast enough. Like it or not, you’re going to have to wait a beat if you want one of these.

Personally, I don’t really understand the appeal of the Steam Deck. While it certainly is a more powerful handheld system than the current Nintendo Switch, it’s not that much better. It’s already been confirmed that games like Destiny 2, Apex or even PUBG don’t work on it (yet), and its limited memory/HDD space means open-world games will be a chore for the device too. It certainly looks like a nifty little piece of tech, but people shouldn’t expect to get performance similar to an actual PC device. Nintendo has their games at least, but Steam Deck…I dunno.

–
Are you excited for the Steam Deck? What do you like about it?

Image from Valve. Edited by Hatmonster