Valve may be shipping out Steam Decks as fast as it can, but it’ll be sometime before the company is able to clear the backlog of reservations and improve the immediate availability of its handheld gaming PC. Luckily for you, Valve’s heard your monkey’s paw wishes and finally offered “more clarity” on when you’ll receive your Deck, shifting the release date from an uncertain window to… another uncertain window.
In a Steam Community news post, Valve says it now has “more clarity on [its] longer term production schedule”, meaning that users can now see whether their reservation lands within Q3 order availability. Unfortunately for some, this also means that you’ll know if your pre-order lands in the far off future window of “after Q3.”
The company says it’s “working hard to increase the number of Steam Decks [it] can produce this year”, so don’t feel too deflated about having to wait for your reservation, as there’s every chance it could be moved up. Valve also plans to make the device available in more countries too, such as Japan, by the end of the year.
While being one of the first to get your hands on the Steam Deck is inarguably exciting, getting one further down the line gives Valve time to work out some teething issues with the device. For example, some users were reportedly suffering from stick drift, but this was quickly fixed via a Steam Deck update.
Plus, it may be worth waiting for the official Steam Deck dock to pop up this Spring, which should make it easier to use in desktop mode than we found it to be in our Steam Deck review. For now, it may help to remember the following quote from philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau: “Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.”