Steam Deck: Valve finally makes powerful gaming handheld freely orderable

Valve has announced a change to ordering the Steam Deck, having sped up the pre-order process during the summer. Available since July 2021, it often took Valve nine months or so to fulfil early pre-orders. Following early units shipping, Valve then opened a wait list system for most of the year. As a result, second-hand prices rocketed, mirroring availability issues with AMD Radeon RX and NVIDIA GeForce RTX desktop graphics cards.

Now, Valve has confirmed that it can fulfil any Steam Deck order within 1-2 weeks of it being placed. Incidentally, the improvement in availability coincides with the release of the official Steam Deck Docking Station, details of which we have covered separately. For context, Valve now claims to have sold over a million Steam Deck units, over double what the Steam Machine series achieved within its three-year lifespan.

Thankfully, Valve has maintained Steam Deck prices, with the console still starting at US$399 with a 64 GB eMMC drive. Alternatively, Valve sells the device with a 256 GB NVMe SSD for US$529 or US$649 if you need 512 GB of storage. Please note that all Steam Deck units feature an M.2 2230 slot, even the eMMC version. You can purchase the Steam Deck via Valve's dedicated website.

Purchase the Benazcap Steam Deck Screen Protector on Amazon