Valve’s Steam Deck Delayed Until 2022

Originally slated for a December release, Valve’s Steam Deck was all set to be the killer game system this holiday season. Now, however, the company has confirmed they won’t be shipping any Steam Decks to consumers until February 2022.

In a blog post, Valve was both apologetic and blunt. “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.”

This complicates an already-confusing system. Previously, those who reserved Steam Deck orders the earliest got December estimates while others got 2022 estimates. Now, the earliest reserved orders are projected to ship in Q1 2022, while others are projected to ship in Q2 2022.

Furthermore, these are not actual pre-orders but reservations. And while Valve is confident in their ability to convert reservations into orders, there is a chance some orders may slip through the cracks.

Surprising nobody, Valve laid blame for the delay on material shortages. In its statement, the company wrote, “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.”

Continuing, they wrote, “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.”

Early impressions of the Steam Deck have been very positive, and that makes this news a bit harder to swallow. But at least it seems like this anticipated game system will be worth the wait!