Valve made an announcement that will excite plenty of gamers waiting patiently for their Steam Decks. According to the company, all reservations will be fulfilled by the end of 2022.
Great news: Everyone who currently has a reservation can get their Steam Deck by the end of this year! We’ve cleared up supply chain issues, a bunch of folks got moved up to Q3, and all other reservations are now in Q4. More details here:https://t.co/Xj2yEHqpKZ pic.twitter.com/floa2xZelKJuly 29, 2022
Valve cites this as the easing of supply chain issues, which had previously choked out Steam Deck production for months. Now it can ramp up production of the handheld, with some gamers’ ship date moved up to the third quarter (July-September). Everyone else will receive theirs by the end of Q4 2022 (October-December).
If you reserve one now, you should be able to lock in a Q4 2022 date. And once Valve reaches full capacity, it will start up the queue for a 2023 delivery window. This news comes a week after Valve announced that Steam Deck production would be doubled.
Analysis: But what about the accessories?
It’s great to see that more Steam Decks will be getting into the hands of buyers much faster now, and it bodes well for future production and shipments to be swift and roadblock free.
However, Valve should be working on getting more accessories into those same hands, before third-party suppliers do it for them.
An official statement from Valve explains: “Due to parts shortages and COVID closures at our manufacturing facilities, the official Steam Deck Docking Station is delayed.” And while they had gone on to say that Steam Deck production was unavailable, that clearly wasn’t the case due to supply chain shortages that only let up recently.
So now that Valve is able to ship out Steam Decks early and on time, the company needs to get cracking on that docking station before it gets pushed out of its own market by third-party manufacturers who are already filling in that gap.
At least they left replacement parts up to iFixit.
