It looks like Valve may have underestimated everyone’s desire to own a Steam Deck. According to Gamesindustry.biz, Valve is pushing back reservations for the Steam Deck, well past the original release date and into Q2/Q3 2022. There have also been reports of users having a tough time reserving the Steam Deck when it went live — something I can attest to as I also experienced issues trying to pay for my reservation. I was worried that they had sold out or something for a while.
Valve’s Steam Deck was revealed on July 15th, 2020, in three different variants: a 64GB eMMC storage edition, 256GB SSD, and 512GB SSD. Reservations for the Steam Deck started on Friday, July 16th,2021. Of course, many of those reservations made their way onto eBay, despite Valve’s attempts to prevent that from happening. It wasn’t surprising to see that, but what is surprising is the prices of some of these Steam Deck eBay auctions. I mean, who the heck will pay $900, $1500, or even $2000 on this?
Hopefully, the answer is nobody. But, I should know better by now.
Despite that, Valve is still taking orders for the Steam Deck. You would think they would close them off and get the initial systems taken care of first and then start accepting orders again. Either way, it’s definitely a good sign that PC gaming is alive and well. As for how well SteamOS is going to handle certain games thanks to anti-check methods and Photon (WINE), not being able to handle anti-check at the moment is another thing. Or, you could forgo SteamOS, slap a Windows install on the device, assuming driver support is there, and game that way.
I’m far from thinking that the Steam Deck is a Nintendo Switch killer, and it isn’t. I’m more concerned about whether Valve can deliver on the Steam Deck promises and doesn’t end up dropping it like several other prior Steam hardware products—namely the Steam Link, Steam Controller, and Steam Machines. I have my fingers crossed that the Steam Deck is exactly what Valve says it is and that I get mine sometime before 2023.
