On Monday, Valve announced the good news that it has doubled the number of Steam Deck gaming handhelds shipped to customers. The official Twitter account reads, “With capacity picking up, weekly shipments of the Steam Deck will more than double starting immediately.” This was re-emphasized by Valve designer Lawrence Yang in a response to a question from TheVerge editor Sean Hollister.
If you’ve been refreshing your inbox for the past week to see if Valve could replenish your Steam Deck handheld pre-orders in time, the new capacity will obviously help you get your hands on one sooner. The new capacity will obviously help you get your hands on one sooner.
Previously, TheVerge editor Jay Peters’ Steam Deck pre-order page had been showing an estimated shipping date of March 2022. But new emails indicate that orders are expected to arrive earlier in the quarter.
If you placed your order in Q1, look for an email from Valve around June 30. Make sure you confirm your order within 72 hours because the official time frame has been stated.
SteAMDB data shows that Steam Deck has held the top spot for 9 of the last 11 weeks. As a handheld that starts at $399, Valve is clearly betting on the product’s huge boost to platform game sales.
But because demand is so strong, Valve still has a lot of room for improvement. For example, an unofficial summary shared by Reddit user Fammy shows that it still hasn’t delivered orders for the 512GB premium model in the UK in time for the July 2021 launch.
Also earlier this month, Steam Deck was delayed from its “late spring” release schedule. The good news is that Valve has graciously upgraded the handheld to the new specifications now available.
