The Steam Deck will start shipping on 25th February

Valve has confirmed the release date of Steam Deck, their upcoming handheld gaming PC. Having missed its original target, it will now launch on 25th February 2022… kind of.

25th February is actually the date when Valve will send the first batch of order emails to those with a Steam Deck reservation – Valve put a reservation system in place with a deposit in order to cut down on scalpers. Customers will then have 72 hours to make a full purchase, or the reservation will be released to the next person in the queue. Valve hope to ship new Steam Decks on a weekly basis, working through the backlog of orders.

There’s a few key caveats to remember if you have a Steam Deck reserved;

• They will start sending invites shortly after 10AM PST / 6PM GMT on 25th February 2022.
• Order emails are sent in the same order that reservations were made.
• You can only order the Steam Deck model that you originally reserved.
• Your reservation deposit will be applied to the final price of Steam Deck, and shipping costs are included.

Steam Deck is Valve’s latest attempt at creating new gaming hardware. The handheld has a 7″ touchscreen and a pair of touchpads in addition to all the thumbsticks, face buttons and more that you’d expect. It’s built on AMD’s latest chipsets, offering decent PC gaming performance in a compact form factor. While it can run Windows, the default system is the Linux-based SteamOS 3.0, using Proton to run Windows games without modification. Valve recently announced Dynamic Cloud Sync, a new API and method to allow for syncing save files while games are still open on a sleeping Steam Deck, letting you quickly resume the game on another system.

Originally meant to ship in late 2021, Valve were forced to delay the release until February 2022, citing more difficulties with the global supply chain than they had originally factored in for their original announcement. Thankfully there haven’t been any further delays!

Source: Steam