News continues to pour in over Valve’s Steam Deck, which was recently announced. Reservations went live for preorder slots on July 16, though it went anything but smoothly. Unfortunately, many people who attempted to reserve a slot were hit with errors messages, while others were being told that their account was too new to reserve a spot, despite them having had a Steam account for many years.
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As orders continued to pile in, the expected order availability continued to get pushed back, depending on which version of the Steam Deck you were after. The 64GB Steam Deck landed with an expected order availability of Q1 2022, the 256GB is Q2 2022, and the 512GB reached Q3 2022.
We were also able to get a quick look at some of the statistics for the Steam Deck preorder numbers. Within two days, more than 110,000 had been placed for the two more expensive versions of Steam Deck between North America, the UK, and the EU. 71,600 of those reservations for preorders were for the 512BG version, and of those, 55,000 orders came just from North America. In a similar flavor, 33,000 of the reservations for preorders went to the 265GB model, and 28,000 of those came from North America, too.
The most recent information we’ve gotten on the Steam Deck now includes the fact that all three versions will have slots to upgrade the SSD drive, despite the cheapest version which doesn’t include SSD storage. However, in Steam’s specific list of tech specs for the Steam Deck, it says that the SSD drives are “not intended for end-user replacement.” In short, this basically means that, potentially, those who own the cheapest version of the Steam Deck may be able to open it up and connect an SSD drive.
With the Steam Deck being in such high demand and the expected order availibility getting pushed back, people have become frustrated. A spokesperson for Valve has responded by stating that they're making them as quickly as they're able to, and that the different shipment times are based on region and models that you reserve.
Next: Steam Deck Battery Life Is 2 To 8 Hours "Depending On What You're Doing"
