The highly anticipated handheld game PC Steam Deck has been delayed once, from its originally planned December 2021 to February 2022, and the chip shortage is still very serious, so will Steam Deck be delayed again? Lucky for you Yes, it doesn’t look like that. Valve published a new blog today confirming that Steam Deck will still be available for shipment until the end of February.
Of course, not everyone’s orders will be shipped in February, because Valve has said it will ship in the order of pre-orders. At the same time, Valve has also been accelerating their Steam Deck verification program (Portal 2 is the first game to officially receive a green checkmark for Deck verification), by sending developers test development kits.
The full text of the blog is as follows:
Happy New Year! Our team is back from vacation and in full swing – today with a few updates.
First and foremost, we can launch Steam Deck on time. Despite the global pandemic, supply issues, and shipping issues, it still looks like we can start shipping by the end of February. In case you forgot, you can check the estimated availability here.
At the same time, work and testing on the Steam Deck Validation Project are underway. You’ll soon be seeing Deck verification results for more and more Steam games. We looked at four main categories: Input, Seamless Experience, Display, and System Support. You can find more details about this project here.
It’s just as important for developers to be able to test their games for the nice green verified tick, so we’ve been giving away developer kits in bulk. A new batch of developer kits is in the process of being approved, and we’ve shipped hundreds of kits in the last month (and we’ll continue to approve and ship more). Thanks for your patience, developers!
Even if there are thousands of words, it is not as good as having pictures and the truth. The production-ready version is being scaled up, and we have a few first machines in-house for testing and evaluation (they look great!)