Several people on RPS have managed to secure a Steam Deck since Valve’s handheld starting shipping around five months ago. If you’re not so lucky, then good news: Valve say they’re speeding up production and everyone who has currently ordered one should receive their Steam Deck before the end of the year.
“We’re excited to announce that we’re going to be able to fulfill demand sooner than we had estimated for everyone in the reservation queue,” begins the post on the Steam site. “Many of the supply chain shortfalls that affect Steam Deck are gradually clearing up, and we’re continuing to ramp production, so we’re able to produce more Decks faster than ever before.”
“As of today we’ve updated the reservation windows, and everyone who’s currently in the reservation queue will get their Steam Deck email this year,” the post continues. “Many customers who were in the ‘Q4 or later’ window have been bumped up to ‘Q3 (July-September)’ window. And everyone else is now solidly in the ‘Q4 (October-December)’ window.”
If you don’t currently have a reservation, purchasing one now will place you in the Q4 bucket, meaning you should still get your Steam Deck in 2022.
The way Steam Deck fulfillment works is that you spend a few dollars or pounds to buy a reservation, and get assigned a shipment window. Once Valve have a Steam Deck in hand to send you, you’ll receive an email and notifications on Steam asking you to pay the remaining price. You’ve got a time limit to do that within – a week or two, I forget – and if you pay the price, it’ll be shipped to you quickly.
We like the Steam Deck a lot, for reasons which James explained best in his Steam Deck review. “I normally hate this word, but the experience of using a Steam Deck is satisfying, exciting, and largely unique: it’s playing a blockbuster action-adventure on the way into town and digging into a Humble Bundle haul on the way back; it’s shutting down your PC after reaching a save point, then picking up from the same cloud save later in bed; it’s a novel yet comfortable way to play the games you already own, with enough in the way of performance and PC-style openness to avoid it feeling like a gimmick.” It’s neat that more people will get to play with it sooner.