Valve says Steam Deck pre-orders 'on track' for February — but there's a catch

(Epitome credit: Valve)

If Valve had been able to stick to its original timeline, quick-on-the-depict Steam Deck buyers would have their handheld gaming PC right now. Originally, the company pitched a December launch for the get-go moving ridge of handhelds, before pushing the judge back to February.

Given the clasp on inventory for everything from PS5 restocks to the all-time electric cars, cynics wondered if this would exist the first filibuster of many. Not so, says Valve, which states that the February timeline is "on track" — albeit with a pretty significant caveat.

"First and foremost, we're on track to ship Steam Deck on time," the company wrote in a blog mail. "Global pandemic, supply issues, and shipping issues notwithstanding, information technology looks like we'll exist able to start getting these out the door past the end of February," the post continues.

'Issues notwithstanding'

Those first eight words are doing a lot of heavy lifting, here. The global pandemic and supply chain problems take been responsible for pretty much every tech shortage and delay in the by two years, and information technology'southward afflicted everything from cars to phones manufactured by companies of all sizes — including the mighty buy power of Apple.

On pinnacle of that, the Steam Deck is a cutting edge handheld, and far less technically ambitious projects have been impacted by the possible pitfalls.

Take PlayDate. Similar Steam Deck, information technology'due south a handheld gaming arrangement, only unlike Steam Deck it has a monochrome screen and a 180Mhz processor — and still Dec pre-orders were pushed dorsum into 'early on 2022' due, in part, to supply chain issues.

"With lots of pre-orders in place, we immediately placed an order at our factory for all the parts needed for 2022 units and beyond," the company wrote in an email to backers. "The response was… sobering. Many of our parts have been delayed significantly. In fact, we can't go whatever more of Playdate'due south electric current CPU for — yous're not going to believe this — two years. Like, 730 days."

The global chip shortage, the visitor concluded, is "very real" and here for the foreseeable futurity. "Covid-19 caused an ever-cascading set of worldwide supply chain failures that are leading to many, many electronic parts being simply… gone," it added.

PlayDate'southward solution was to switch to a more widely bachelor CPU, which is something that's less easy to do with cut-edge hardware — like Valve's Steam Deck.

If we had to approximate, we'd imagine Valve has factored in the possible bug and still believes February is likely, with the caveat in place as comprehend.

Still, just considering the offset batch are on target for February doesn't mean that people further down the queue won't exist impacted past the ongoing problems that go on to give companies of all sizes i jumbo headache.

Freelance contributor Alan has been writing about tech for over a decade, covering phones, drones and everything in between. Previously Deputy Editor of tech site Alphr, his words are found all over the web and in the occasional magazine too. When not weighing upward the pros and cons of the latest smartwatch, you lot'll probably find him tackling his e'er-growing games backlog. Or, more likely, playing Spelunky for the millionth time.