In rather unfortunate news Valve has announced that they will need to delay the launch of their new Steam Deck hardware until first quarter 2022.
“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 posted on their website November 10.
Electronics companies around the world have had their merchandise and sales impacted by the current global supply chain shortage, and it doesn’t look likely that there will be a reprieve any time soon. The gaming industry, which has seen a difficult struggle with supplies for next-gen consoles, isn’t unique with this dilemma. Major car manufacturers such as BMW and Ford Motor Company, appliance sellers, smartphone manufacturers (including Apple), and major machinery chains have also been experiencing drastic reductions in their product manufacturing.
“Based on our updated build estimates, Steam Deck will start shipping to customers February 2022,” Valve explained in the post. “This will be the new start date of the reservation queue—all reservation holders keep their place in line but dates will shift back accordingly. Reservation date estimates will be updated shortly after this announcement.”
“Again, we’re sorry we won’t be able to make our original ship date. We’ll continue working to improve reservation dates based on the new timeline, and will keep folks updated as we go.”
The Steam Deck’s new launch date now puts it two months out from it’s initial December 2021 launch window. At the time of this writing, Valve’s sales site for the Steam Deck notes “Expected order availability: After Q2 2022”.
On the Steam Deck FAQ page, Valve issued an additional statement saying, “while we did our best to account for the global supply chain issues (by which we mean we factored in extra time to account for these risks and worked with multiple component vendors), our manufacturing plans were still impacted. Material shortages and delays meant that components weren’t making it to our manufacturing facilities on time. Missing parts along with logistical challenges means delayed Steam Decks, so we needed to push out shipping by two months to February.”
Were you planning on purchasing a Steam Deck? If you were, does this delay impact your plans to own Valve’s portable PC gaming system? We’d love to hear your thoughts. Leave us a comment!
Source: Valve
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