Valve has just delayed its highly anticipated Steam Deck by a couple of months. Announced in a blog post on the Steam website, the company has said the handheld will now be available February 2022, rather than its original release date of December 2021, completely missing the holiday season.
In the blog post, the company apologized, “We’re sorry about this—we did our best to work around the global supply chain issues, but due to material shortages, components aren’t reaching our manufacturing facilities in time for us to meet our initial launch dates.” Valve also promised, “all reservation holders keep their place in line but dates will shift back accordingly. Reservation date estimates will be updated shortly after this announcement.”
The Valve Steam Deck is described as an “all-in-one portable PC gaming” machine and is Valve’s answer to the Nintendo Switch, but more. It is a fully functional PC in the form of a handheld console, being incredibly customizable due to its expandable storage and unlimited software selection. There are three price tiers for the console based on its storage: $399 for 64GB, $529 for 256GB, and $649 for 512GB. However, due to the customizability, consumers can purchase the lowest-priced Steam Deck and expand the storage themselves. Valve has also stated, “There is no in-game difference in frame rates or graphics quality between the three models.”
Players can easily access their entire Steam library on the device, making nearly any PC game portable. The console’s ability to accept nearly any software also allows the possibility to play games not on Steam. Judging by the mounting excitement and anticipation for the handheld gaming PC, this delay will be a big blow to gamers who thought they only had one more month to wait for their device.
The Steam Deck will be available in February 2022 and will initially ship to the United States, Canada, European Union, and the United Kingdom. More regions are in the works.
