The launch of Valve Software’s new portable gaming PC, the Steam Deck, has been pushed back two months to February 2022.
Bellevue, Wash.-based Valve announced the delay Wednesday via the official Steam blog. According to an official FAQ for the Steam Deck, the delay is being blamed on the current disruption of the global supply chain.
“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,” Valve wrote. “Material shortages and delays meant that components weren’t making it to our manufacturing facilities on time.”
Valve said that all that’s changed about the pre-order process for the Steam Deck is the date. It opened pre-orders last summer on a first-come, first-served basis, and anyone who secured a place in that line should still have it despite the delay. It’s just going to take two months longer to actually get your computer.
Steam Deck is delayed by two months. Learn more here https://t.co/BOxpdrMGIr pic.twitter.com/5txJxSoJu9
— Steam Deck (@OnDeck) November 10, 2021
The Steam Deck was originally revealed in July, following an anonymous leak in May. It combines the form factor of a handheld gaming system like the Nintendo Switch with a high-powered, miniaturized gaming PC, which can run many (but not all) of the titles currently available on Valve’s digital storefront Steam.
The Deck features a custom AMD APU with a Zen 2 2.4-3.5 Ghz CPU, 16GB of RAM, and a MicroSD card slot for expanded storage. Out of the box, it runs off of a new edition of SteamOS, the Linux-based operating system that Valve first used for its standalone Steam Machine PCs.
My big takeaways from the Deck, after getting some hands-on time with it in August, were its versatility and low price. At a starting price of $399, the Deck lets you get a lot of computer for the cost, and you can hook it up to a keyboard, monitor, and mouse to use it as a portable workstation.
Alternatively, Valve has no plans to include lockdown measures on the Deck, so tinkerers can wipe its drive and install whatever software they like. It’s a big giveaway to the homebrew community, like an officially endorsed version of the famously hack-friendly PlayStation Vita.
