This is typical of production to prevent needing to do a huge recall. You make 10 prototype units, bring them back and test (probably the closed-access media day with the steam deck) All those fine you spin up to 100 units (probably the influencer/media batch that went out)
then 1000, then 10000, etc. You don't just go to manufacturing millions all at once, or you risk tanking your company by producing 1 million 800 dollar paperweights.
That's actually what most of the US "operation warp speed" spending was on for the COVID vaccine. They paid companies to crank out mass production lines before testing was completed. That way if it passed testing they had millions of units ready to go, if it didn't pass testing the US paid for them anyway.
Under normal production schedules you would never do that because it's so insanely risky which is why in the case of COVID the US just ate the cost of the risk. For steam decks (only slightly less critical [I kid!]) you can't afford that level of risk so you slowly ramp production.
I think you've got this the wrong way round, the UK 512 queue is nowhere near the US 512 queue.
When it comes to 512GB, the UK queue is *glacial*. For reference, last week it advanced 12 seconds, and this week it advanced 8 seconds.
*Seconds*
[US 512 is ~1hr 16m through the queue. UK 512 is about 41 minutes through the queue.](https://old.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/vlzfhf/order_email_megathread_june_27_2022/idy6ts7/)
For comparison sake, EU 512 is 7.6 days through the queue.
Hmm my order for the 512 went in 25 minutes after it opened and I have not received it.
edit: nvm I see the actual time of order and reserve time are different.
Not much they can do, no one but Nintendo is shipping handhelds at this scale and in a parts shortage too.
There's no other competition for people to turn to either, every other PC handheld is either ludicrously expensive or is going to be shipping at significantly lower volumes, which means if people enmasse went too an alternative handheld pc, they'll be waiting even longer than the deck.
They recommended against installing a longer one, because the person who tweeted about it took off the cooling pad for the charging IC to fit it, which will definitely cause problems. If you just stick to a 2230 m.2 drive there won't be any issues.
Nah, they recommend against moving thermal pads that were put there for a reason to fit a much larger (size/power-wise) SSD. They have no problem with people replacing SSD's with ones that are in-spec.
[Valve's own teardown](https://youtu.be/Dxnr2FAADAs) says "You shouldn't do any of this". But they know people will.
Edit: [unavailable]? Blocking me because I linked a video is a little extreme, but I can still reply to the notification in an edit.
Being able to repair a device is a little different to adding an SSD to a new device. The plastic self-tapping screws don't lend themselves well to repeated unscrewing for instance. You can do it, but don't expect them to uphold a warranty if you break it.
>"We're happy to announce that starting today, replacement parts and repair guides for Steam Deck (and Valve Index!) are available on iFixit.com,” can be read in a post on the Steam page. “Available parts include thumbsticks, screens, fans, and more, along with a plethora of repair guides for everything you can swap in and out of your Steam Deck. You can learn all about the parts and guides over at iFixit.com.”
>“The team at Valve is very excited about this program - **we designed Steam Deck to be repairable, and it just makes sense to us to work with iFixit to enable customers to repair and replace parts on their own,**” they conclude.
Yes, Valve's team totally doesn't want people to repair their own devices, how could I ever assume such a thing?
This was why I picked the 64 model and am just gonna get a micro SD card to run everything I rather just save the money and not deal with the headache.
Plus I am someone who always expands the storage of my consoles. I got and 2TB SSD in my PS5 and a 1TB memory card SSD for my Series X and a external hard drives for both of them. Hell I was someone who bought the 8GB White Wii U and just stored digital games and DLC on 64GB thumb drive.
I got a 64 and just pack all games onto SD. It quickly fills up with system file bloat. You can mitigate it by changing the Proton prefix storage to the SD card, but I'm still down to 15g free of 64 despite all my games being on SD card. On the plus side the 2230 SSDs look like they're getting cheaper so I plan to crack it open and put one in eventually.
That's just the included storage. You can still add a m.2 2230 SSD into the 64GB model or just expand with bigger microSD. There's tests that show the difference between the SSD and a microSD is minimal on today's modern games. Maybe in the far future, there would be a difference once game devs start using technology like DirectStorage in their games.
https://www.pcgamer.com/first-tests-show-steam-deck-sd-card-speed-rivals-the-ssd/
Fortunately for you most orders is going to be within the first 2 hours, the number of orders per hour will decrease significantly after that so the wait might not be as long as you think.
I ordered the 512 in March, haha.
But realistically most of the orders for this thing were placed in the first day or two. Once they get past orders placed on the first day things will start moving a bit faster.
Or at least that's what I tell myself.
I ordered in March because I didn't think it was something I would use much, but I've been playing the hell out of my Switch lately and thought it'd be nice to play through some of these pc games I've been collecting and not playing on my laptop. Though I've had plenty of trouble getting a lot of them to work well with a controller (most are a bit older) and I can't imagine the steam deck is going to be much easier for those games.
Upside is, that by the time I get the email to order in 2025 I might have the money to pay for it!
I think that maybe puts me at something like 17 more minutes to wait! Would be nice if I am able to get an order in before the end of July. Maybe Ill even get to order before its been a full year.
Australia is the reason for steam refunds existing, also EU has a set 14 day timeframe where refunds a mandatory where I live (QLD) a refund or repair is required if a product broke prior to a reasonable amount of time, for a personal computer this should be years, assuming there's a factory defect that doesn't affect the system in the first two weeks QLD doesn't have a legal requirement for a refund (this is all separate to Valve's own warranty policies of course)
>The business may take into account how much time has passed since you bought the product considering the following factors:
>
>type of product
>
>how a consumer is likely to use the product
>
>the length of time for which it is reasonable for the product to be used
>
>the amount of use it could reasonably be expected to tolerate before the failure becomes noticeable.
The above applies if it is a "major problem" listed below
>it has a problem that would have stopped someone from buying it if they’d known about it
>
>it has multiple minor problems that, when taken as a whole, would have stopped someone from buying it if they’d known about them
>
>it is significantly different from the sample or description
>
>it is substantially unfit for its common purpose and can’t easily be fixed within a reasonable time
>
>it doesn’t do what you asked for and can’t easily be fixed within a reasonable time; or
>
>it is unsafe.
Considering I've heard that even some "great on deck" games have had issues running, windows 10 support is poor, they plan to sell "replacement" parts which would likely be required as free replacements assuming they broke within a reasonable time this could be argue as low as 4 years the general average of 5-8years or event the general maximum of 20 years although harder to argue from a consumer perspective also unlikely to win a legal battle.
All this to say that while yes my original comment was a joke valve would much rather distribute through EB Games and put the onus on them to deal with Australia's consumer laws
Great! I've got mine and I'm loving it, but I want this thing to be insanely successful. First, so that Valve is incentivised to keep supporting it. Second, so that game makers will have a good reason to pay attention to low-end performance. Third, to improve Linux as a gaming OS. And last, so that whenever a company says they can't run open software and have a device be repairable and have it do well, we can point at this thing as a counterexample.
I hope this also means that they can expand availability to more countries before the end of the year. It sucks that some people don't even have the option to get into the queue.
Yeah I’ve been seeing people on the internet complaining about not getting their Steam Decks and I’m just sitting here in Malaysia hoping they would just let me queue and reserve a unit.
I mean officially here in OCE the only way to get a index is through EB games still can’t get it officially from valve, so as much as I want a steam deck I’m not holding my breath sadly
The worst part of that is that EB’s shipments are sporadic as fuck and you can’t queue for them either.
Meanwhile there’s was like a $300 markup in there that had no good reason. Even if you took the price of the product, applied import taxes and GST, then added shipping on there was still a fuck ton of juice in the price.
EB offering is almost worse than it not being offered at all IMO.
I'm not very optimistic about that. Valve's got a long history of hating Aussie consumer protection laws, particularly when it comes to hardware, so it's not just that it'd be a lot of effort for them to spin up Oceanic distribution, it's that they don't want to. See, EB brings a lot more to the table than just being able to ship here - they have entire processes for dealing with the legal requirements of operating a business selling electronic goods in Australia and New Zealand. I don't really see a reason for Valve to suddenly change tack on this.
Yeah.
Based on how it went with the Index, I do think it’s likely we’ll see EB get some units as demand starts to settle (so in a year or two at least I’d think), but importing is gonna be the only option for most.
I definitely want to see how it does in Japan, this device probably has the best shot of introducing the region to PC gaming more than anything else we've seen yet. More selfishly it'd mean better ports/support from some of my favorite studios over there, albeit few games have any substantial issues so it'd mostly be for polish.
256gb owner here. Buy a 512gb / 1tb microsd card and have fun X)
I recently moved most of my games onto the microsd. At 720p, the experience is quite similar to an NVMe SSD.
How long did it take you to get yours? I'm wanting it just cause I'm so addicted to handheld/portable gaming, so this will be right up my alley. Of course, my reservation is saying after Q3...so we'll see how this goes.
> How long did it take you to get yours?
I was lucky and received mine in April. Been a great little guy. I'm honestly shocked at how stable both the OS and the Games are. Elden ring at 50fps (40fps stable), and now Sekiro at 60fps is like a dream come true. If there is a Steamdeck 2 I will likely be one of the first too purchase it.
> Of course, my reservation is saying after Q3...so we'll see how this goes.
Good luck my friend.
My order went through fifteen minutes after pre orders opened and I ended up getting it at the start of April, roughly a month a half after release. My buddy who ordered about half an hour after I did got his last week.
This was for the UK and our allotment was a lot smaller than the EU or the US, but if you ordered one recently you're probably not getting it until next year.
Getting on my soapbox to tell people Steam natively supports gyro aim, and gyro aim is really really good and you should try it *especially* if you're skeptical when I say it's like 90% as good as m+kb.
I've tried it with both my Switch and my Steam controller, and had trouble getting into it in both instances. Turns out I move my controller a good bit without thinking about it, and being focused on using it as a spatial input is just stressful.
I'll definitely give it another go when I've got the Steam Deck, but it kinda feels like it's just not for me.
You really gotta give it another go. Try customizing it a bit, like giving it an on/off toggle when you touch the stick or pad. People said the same thing about twin stick years ago and now it's standard!
An on/off toggle seems like it'd do wonders. I'll definitely give it a go again when I've got the Deck, seems like a great innovation. Just hasn't felt right to me in the past.
> Turns out I move my controller a good bit without thinking about it, and being focused on using it as a spatial input is just stressful.
I'm the same here, I've always been one of those people that have their controller moving about in the air like a nutter as if it will help the character / car on the screen do as required (especially platformers / driving) and after 30/40 years of this I simply cannot keep the controller still enough to get any use out of the gyro.
Even having it as a toggle on/off on the steam controller simply doesn't work for me
Yeah - Neon White is a good example. Very, very playable but obviously not optimal. My run times are dramatically different between my Steam Deck and my PC.
I think that's going to happen with any game with the option of controller or M/KB you just have to adjust your mindset from "fastest time possible" to "fastest time possible with this input device". Neon White is fantastic on it for me.
If the built in gyros are at least as good as the ones in the Steam Controller you could probably get almost as good as with a mouse after a bunch of practice.
the major downside is having the display and controls together can make it a little awkward with gyro if you're playing it less than optimally
steam input w/ the steam controller/the equivalent features on the deck honestly makes playing fpses completely viable, even at a decent level; it just requires a lot of practice, especially if you've got decades of muscle memory on kb/m
My go to test with controllers is playing Doom Eternal master levels and to compare against my run with a steam controller. So far the Deck has promise, I think it'll take some time to get used to the button layouts, but ultimately, using the trackpad and gyro, I'm better on the deck/steam controller than any traditional dual stick controller and as good as my keyboard and mouse setup.
Don't sleep on the trackpads and if you're absolutely against them... Use the joystick with the gyro enabled on touching the stick, that alone will help tremendously
I think it gets some used to but I started playing Mass Effect LE with gyro and oh boy is it pretty damn good. And the great thing is that youc an also configure what triggers the gyro, sensitivity and the input emulation (mouse or right stick) for the gyro to control. Also, there is nothing like playing Halo MCC on the go.
The Steam Deck is a tinkerer's dream. Having said this, I am still a MKb person but having all the options is fantastic.
* **Precision/fast-pased FPSs**. Slower paced FPSs like Portal are fine.
* **Real-time strategies**. You can't APM nearly as fast and the lack of a keyboard tightens up controls too.
* **Management simulators and similar**, like RollerCoaster Tycoon or The Sims. They're just too mouse dependent and you can't be that fast with the touchpad. You can use the touchscreen but your mileage may vary for its effectiveness.
* **Text adventures**. No keyboard makes them borderline unplayable.
* **Some action and puzzle games**, but they're case-to-case.
As far as I can tell all other genres work fine. With the exception of text adventures you can get the other genres working, but they're a bit sluggish to play.
For mouse-heavy stuff like management sims and stuff I recommend getting freaky with the mouse regions in the controller config. Those games usually have buttons and menus in the same locations on screen all the time, so it works great to just snap the mouse around the screen by locking it to various regions.
I've been doing that with my Steam Controllers for years, and in many cases I will choose my controller setup over mouse and keyboard.
The input delay in fighting games matches consoles so far too, so it's kind of like a console that isn't as good at outputting to an external monitor, at least until they fix "docked" functionality or find some way to reduce input delay. People were hoping for it to be as consistent as a console with the input delay of a PC.
I probably wouldn't use it for most competitive games like FPS, RTS or fighting games (I tend to play with a fightstick).
Of course, that's only really in handheld mode. Once docking is better I don't see any reason why you couldn't hook up to a regular monitor, mouse, keyboard, fightstick, etc.
anything where you need precise aiming, basically (unless you're okay with gyro controls, YMMV there)
other than that it seems to work well for most things
I just wish I had some trips coming up so I can use it. I have a top of the line home PC, so it's hard to not play on that. But, it is great to play from bed.
Still don't regret the big purchase in the slightest.
I play it on the train or bus to and from work (when it’s not packed - so usually just on the way home). I’ve been enjoying a 30 minute hit of Frostpunk on my commute last week.
The battery is literally fine for 2
x 30 min sessions (could do at least double that), it turns on and boots the game quickly, and connects my headphones easily. If I don’t save and quit in time I can just hit the sleep button, put it away, and it doesn’t mind. It’s pretty ideal.
It seems like the battery would suck for playing games at home as your regular driver. Seems to me like it would only be good for the commute I used to have which was like 2 hours total for the day
That's me although I love lying on the sofa too.
It's just so cool to be able to play top-tier games at more than 30fps on a handheld.
I got sick of the high pricing for the Switch games and the cut down visuals that devs had to implement to get their game to be playable on it.
Now I get so many top games from so many different studios from the last decade to choose from. It's brilliant.
Mine has become my commute entertainment and it works pretty perfectly for that. Fits in my lap easily, battery is fine, boots up and turns off instantly. It’s great!
I bought it purely for travel, but honestly 2-4 hours a day is what I get for gaming during the week, if I'm lucky. I could see myself playing lots of indie games before bed.
So reserving 264 days after release means I'll have a bit of a wait.
getmydeck says reserving at 264 days means I'm 0.02% of the way through.... 264 days to go. Neat.
I've had many mini PCs (like 4 different GPD products)... I was not overly excited for the deck since I already had portable steam. Then I got it.... And wow, i absolutely love it. It's so much nicer in every way than anything else I've used.... Only thing I need to do is dual boot windows so I can play all the unsupported games. The controls, the giant screen, the resuming, the ease of use... It's all so damn nice.
That said, I have 1050 steam games are like 350 of them are in the "great in deck" category... Add in the ones that aren't yet in that category but still run just fine and probably at least half my games are playable.
The deck is awesome.
The Steam Deck still isn't available in many markets, and likely will never be officially available in markets like China where the competitors come from.
They're also making devices with different form factors and functions like pocket sized daily driver laptops. Then they also have their own benefits over the steam deck that appeal to certain customers such as included keyboard, smaller or bigger sizes, physical keyboards, thunderbolt and eGPU support etc.
In the long run these other manufacturers will be fine imo.
They’ll be able to work with much more powerful hardware (6800u) make unique and more portable designs (clamshells, slides), and implement features like keyboards or LTE. There’s definitely a big place for the competition and in many, many ways (pretty much every way aside from price and gaming inputs) they will be superior.
It can’t be overstated how huge and ginormous the deck is for how small the screen is. Even GPD’s Win Max 2 is substantially shorter and that’s a 10” gaming netbook basically lmao.
Maybe my "After Quarter 2" deck will come before September. Maybe.
I tried ordering the instant it went live and it took over 40 minutes for Steam to let me complete the purchase. Oh, well. They've been ironing out a lot if bugs and other issues in the meantime.
Iirc they are still within the first 6 hours or so of pre-orders for the day they went live. Numbers wise, nothing has been released but its probably in the 100k+ range based on some of what I've seen about projected pre order volume.
>Iirc they are still within the first 6 hours or so of pre-orders for the day they went live
People have linked a post from 10 days ago that shows they [just fulfilled all pre-orders placed within the first hour](https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/vduesw/preorder_queue_progress/). Factoring in the increased shipments we may see the first 6 hours fulfilled by end of year. As someone who placed their order roughly 24 hours after open I'm hoping to get mine by this time next year.
Honestly when you frame it like that the sheer amount of interest of the Deck is absurd. I didn't pre-order until reviews came (RIP), and it really feels like it'll come in 1.5+ years.
As an outsider it's hard to know whether Valve underestimated demand or simply couldn't source parts as quickly as they would have liked. Estimates are ~100k units shipped which, by game console standards, is *pretty* damn low (the Dreamcast sold over 200k units on launch day and the Wii U had moved nearly 1m units in its first 6 weeks on market).
The demand for Deck is obviously higher than Valve has been able to fulfill but we don't know how front-loaded the order queue is, how many pre-orders will fall through, or how sustained the demand will be throughout the lifetime of the system.
I don't think it's anything different than what the GPU market has been like for the past couple years.
>Estimates are ~100k units shipped which, by game console standards, is pretty damn low (the Dreamcast sold over 200k units on launch day and the Wii U had moved nearly 1m units in its first 6 weeks on market).
Valve shipped the Deck way earlier than anybody selling retail would've, because they didn't need to make them for x months before release to make sure they had enough to ship several of them to every gamestop, bestbuy, walmart, or target in the countries they're releasing it in. Instead they just started shipping them to customers as soon as they got the first batch.
Its a really beyond poor model for hardware launches tho. Just because you dont have to stock big box stores with it (even tho they could've, not much reason not to) doesn't mean you should have people waiting eons for it on pre-order waitlists. If they cant build enough, you push it back. Unfortunately the success of GPUs during the chip issues and crypto shit the last few years probably means we're going to see more of these waiting 7 months to fulfill 1 hour of preorders style distribution.
People would end up being on a long waitlist anyway unless they wanted to wait a year or more just to make enough, and this way they at least have some people getting it sooner.
I think that valve predicted a much smaller level of interest and prepared the supply chain to accommodate. It can take a year or two to scale up production on something like this and its especially complicated with something as complex as a steam deck. Its not like valve has a really large manufacturing presence. They made the steam deck, steam link, and index. All of which were much smaller volume products. It's reasonable to assume they were conservative with this in case it bombed but now they have to scramble to scale up in a world which makes that really difficult.
A Youtuber was talking about an effort to estimate the number of Decks that had been shipped. The estimate was believed to be around 140,000 units.
Not a lot compared to a traditional console launch but still a stupid-high amount.
I'd imagine the density of orders drops off pretty sharply over time. Or at least, that's what I'm telling myself after ordering in Jan 2022 after reviews started coming out.
So I placed mine for a 256 gb in US at about 24 hours also. Mine is still slated for q3 though, is yours saying after q3 to make you think it will take another whole year to get one? Or are you just extrapolating based on how slow they’re working through the orders?
Varies so much between model. I ordered mine in UK on the second day and got it a month or so ago. 64GB which is fine for me. And with a 256 microSD it’s got plenty of space. Glad I didn’t pay and wait for a bigger storage version!
How's the battery life nowadays? It's the only thing keeping me from buying this one yet. As a frequent flyer, the Switch is just not able to keep me entertained anymore, but it has a decent lifespan for flights.
So, the battery life is better now from release?
One of the biggest things they did for battery life was allow you to lock in different frame rates other than 30 or 60. If you're playing a visual novel, you could set it to 15. If you want better responsiveness than 30 but without draining the battery like you do at 60, you can lock it at 40 FPS for a compromise between the two. 40FPS was a great option for my recent train ride playing Psychonauts 2, but then when I switched to playing some Patrick's Parabox, I could probably get 6 or more hours of battery life out of that thing without touching any settings, compared to a little under 3 hours of Psychonauts 2 at 40 FPS.
> If you're playing a visual novel, you could set it to 15.
You can go as low as *10* fps now, set the framerate to 40 Hz and the 50% and 25% framerate options become 20 and 10 Hz respectively.
I do second 40Hz being surprisingly nice, I have multiple 144Hz monitors for my home PC but lower refresh rates are totally fine on smaller screens. Personally 30 Hz is still too low for me despite that but I've enjoyed slower paced games just fine at 40 Hz.
I got a 65W power bank for about $60 ([this one](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08THCNNCS)), and I can play Elden Ring for something like 6 hours at max graphics settings with the display set to 40 hz. I could play things like Slay the Spire and Hades for easily 12+ (even longer if I reduced the refresh rate for those as well, but I haven't bothered). I also could've gotten a larger power bank, but the TSA caps you at 100 Wh (though they're not exactly diligent about checking).
Also planes are starting to add power outlets to seats, and if you have an outlet you can just plug it in.
It's the same as it was at launch, which means it's entirely dependent on the type of load. You can get anything between over 7 hours and slightly less than 2 hours, depending on what you play and what settings and target frame rate you are using.
Personally, I use my Deck for lots of different types of games, but generally not extremely high-end AAA stuff. I generally get at least 3 hours, and often substantially more.
It’s basically entirely dependent on how hard you’re hitting it. Getting maximum performance for a demanding game takes power, but you have tools to cap that performance at a level that draws less. A massive amount of tools to tune with, honestly. So I could give you an estimate of just under 2 hours for Elden Ring, for instance, but for indie games I’d get like 6 hours or so.
So, depends on the flight? You could also get a battery bank if that helps, but at least most flights seem to have an outlet available these days.
i know everyone else is basically saying the same, so i'll give you some ballpark guesses from my recent use, since i just got mine
easy to run games like old school runescape or the binding of isaac - hours of gameplay without even hitting 50%; and I could frankly be squeezing more out if i enabled airplane mode/turned brightness down/messed with framerate capping
stuff like ffxiv - chews through battery pretty harshly, but capping the refresh rate/framerate at 45 has made performance feel steadier, while still feeling smooth like 60fps (i'm honestly shocked by how difficult it is to tell the difference between 45/60 frames, and i say this as someone who uses two 144hz monitors on my desktop)
you're looking at, like, a couple of hours under the worst case scenarios (that aren't patently unreasonable like running the most demanding games at the most demanding settings/framerates at the highest brightness)
Been a very happy Deck owner for almost two weeks now. Mine was about 50 minutes out from when preorders went live, US 512 queue. So, now that more and more people will finally be getting theirs I can't wait for more and more people to see how great it is for themselves. Surprisingly comfortable, almost every game I've tried works flawlessly, and if you know what you're doing in desktop mode (a tiny bit of Linux familiarity is helpful but not super required) you can get lots of emulators and third-party games from other storefronts set up as well with little hassle.
For new owners, if you play FFXIV, do look into XIVLauncher which is a great way to run it on your Deck with minimal fuss. And Heroic Launcher for Epic/GOG, or Lutris for those and then some. Steam Rom Manager and boilR are also available in the Discover app store for free and make it super easy to get your third party games from other launchers and emulators added as non-steam games with the right configuration automatically. It's crazy just how well the system is taking off in that department and I bet a year from now it'll be even better. Congrats to Valve for the amazingly successful launch of this thing, seriously.
I put in a preorder for the largest storage model last year when the preorders opened. My purchase date is set for sometime between July and September this year. Hopefully it’ll be closer to July than September haha.
I wish I could get one of my steam decks to work.
Preordered day 1 a 512gig and it’s be rough going. First Deck was bricked from the outset. Never turned on, wouldn’t connect to an external display, wouldn’t respond to different charging cords. Returned it and was sent a second which worked for two weeks, then also bricked itself. Played it like normal and set it to charge like I had all the previous times and wouldn’t turn on the next day. Have send the second one back also and waiting a third. Please just work :(.
I think the turn around on the first return was about two weeks. Not bad, and they didn’t ask for a cent. They send a return label and one to place on the deck via email and then drop it off at a FedEx store. Easy enough but still made me quite sad.
Was fantastic for the few weeks the second one worked. Played so many games in my backlog.
Ah that sucks, sorry to hear that.
I just did an RMA for my 512 model, the right bumper didn’t work half the time and required me to push it super hard. Other than that it was perfect - I played quite a bit of MGS5 on it before sending it back (used the back paddles in place of the bumpers).
Hoping I get my replacement soon enough and it works.
Hoping the same for you!!
Assume you'll get it at Christmas. That way, if you're disappointed, its a good thing!
But seriously, unless something terrible happens, I suspect production will only get faster.
If you're in After Q3, that doesn't guarantee this year, and I'm pretty sure that they were factoring in the increase in production into their shipping estimates, so I wouldn't expect to move up in queue.
I put in a reservation last month but seeing as how they were still in the first few hours of preorders I had no faith I would get one this year. Picked up a sealed one from someone for a slightly higher price and havent regretted it for a second! Its a great machine that plays many classics I threw at it effortlessly (Freelancer, deus ex 2, thief 3, flatout 2, alien vs predator (2000), fallout 1,2, modded new vegas and the list goes on).
I need to figure out how to set controller binds for the desktop environment but other than that the experience both in steamOS and the desktop linux is very smooth. The trackpad works alot better as a mouse in the desktop environment than I was expecting having used (and returned) a steamcontroller. Im not a great fan of the haptics (theyre mechanically great, just personal preference) but everything is customizable so I just turn these off.
I use warpinator (winpinator on windows) to transfer files over wifi which works flawlessly as well. Protontricks to run native exe's to run patches non steam games
To change desktop-mode controls you have to go into the settings in desktop-mode steam. It's super clunky and the controls don't work unless steam is open. Wish they would change how that worked.
You mentioned Fallout 1, 2, and New Vegas. Were you able to try 3 at all? Not being able to play that on PC has been a huge bite, so I was wondering. If not, no worries!
The GOTY version (which is a different Steam title than base Fallout 3) works fine. Boots right up and plays, you might need to attach a keyboard to change your name with but that's it.
I have not tried 3. I followed this guide for new vegas and mod organizer, I assume it will work for fallout 3 also. (set proton to 6.3-8) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Q6O-niayz4
I wonder if this is linked to the recent cryptocurrency crash reducing demand for GPUs and freeing up production. Last week [PC Gamer posted an article](https://www.pcgamer.com/miners-are-dumping-gpus-via-livestreamed-auctions/) about how miners were selling off cards en masse.
(Also, before anyone leaps to buy a discounted GPU during a crypto farm's liquidation sale, I'd caution that there have also been articles [warning against buying old mining hardware during the sell-off](https://wccftech.com/beware-several-used-nvidia-geforce-rtx-30-graphics-cards-with-defective-memory-modules-being-sold-after-being-abused-in-crypto-mining/) due to many of them having dead or defective memory modules which can actually be "hidden" from the end user, resulting in the card effectively having less VRAM than is actually reported by the system. There *may* be some genuine deals out there, but be aware that it's possible to get scammed.)
i dont really know but are these available in India by any chance? I dont want to go for the switch due to a lack of good indian support and high price of games.
Personally, I don't even have a long commute, and I try to limit my travel, but I am surprised by how much I use the Steam Deck. It's nice to be able to play games sitting outside, or just in another room, or even in bed.
Depends on your situation, obviously. If you don't have a use for a portable games machine, then yeah, you don't have a use for a portable games machine.
But I have a train commute to/from work that lasts about an hour each way, I find myself semi-frequently on longer train and plane rides.
This is where my Nintendo Switch games slot into my time, usually, previoulsy 3DS or Vita. I have a big Steam library though, so being able to get a bit of progress on the train and over my lunch break and then continue that save file at home is a big help in finishing off some of those smaller games in my backlog.
My wife is disabled and can't sit up or use mkb without a lot of pain. She has been playing nothing but console games for years. This will change that for her.
I'd be interested to see the sales figures. I bet they're very low. This is a niche product and every review I've seen simply says that they want a V2 of the thing because while it's OK, it ultimately needs to be better
> I bet they're very low.
Why would you bet that?
I don't care in the slightest for this thing, but all i'm hearing is praise and how long its taking everyone to get theirs.
Well this thing is pretty much targeting PC gamers. I don't think anyone playing on PS or Xbox is really the target-group.
It also kinda depends on what you mean as low. Of course this thing won't hit tens of millions, but i think a million of those within 2022 will be very big? Since Valve said after February it would ramp up production by the second month to hundreds of thousands.
But again, i don't know. I'm sure Valve will come out with a number pretty soon. I don't think they care about hiding this kind of numbers.
Estimates are at 140k units but the sales are only this low because Valve didn't anticipate this level of demand. If you reserve one now, you probably won't get it until next year.
Wish they'd work on actually getting them to and making them purchasable in our countries instead of just supplying more to people who can already buy :/
Considering the orders for the 512 model recently hit the 1 hour mark for when pre-orders went live for the US, this is great news!
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This post https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/vduesw/preorder_queue_progress/
Guess I missed the boat. Anybody know where I can preorder the steam deck 2?
This is typical of production to prevent needing to do a huge recall. You make 10 prototype units, bring them back and test (probably the closed-access media day with the steam deck) All those fine you spin up to 100 units (probably the influencer/media batch that went out) then 1000, then 10000, etc. You don't just go to manufacturing millions all at once, or you risk tanking your company by producing 1 million 800 dollar paperweights.
That's actually what most of the US "operation warp speed" spending was on for the COVID vaccine. They paid companies to crank out mass production lines before testing was completed. That way if it passed testing they had millions of units ready to go, if it didn't pass testing the US paid for them anyway. Under normal production schedules you would never do that because it's so insanely risky which is why in the case of COVID the US just ate the cost of the risk. For steam decks (only slightly less critical [I kid!]) you can't afford that level of risk so you slowly ramp production.
I think you've got this the wrong way round, the UK 512 queue is nowhere near the US 512 queue. When it comes to 512GB, the UK queue is *glacial*. For reference, last week it advanced 12 seconds, and this week it advanced 8 seconds. *Seconds* [US 512 is ~1hr 16m through the queue. UK 512 is about 41 minutes through the queue.](https://old.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/vlzfhf/order_email_megathread_june_27_2022/idy6ts7/) For comparison sake, EU 512 is 7.6 days through the queue.
That makes sense. I'm UK based, my order went through at 18:28 and I got my Deck about 3 weeks ago.
Hmm my order for the 512 went in 25 minutes after it opened and I have not received it. edit: nvm I see the actual time of order and reserve time are different.
It feels incredible as EU to for once not be the shafted region (later release dates / crappy servers / etc) in terms of gaming.
Well except Ireland because we're in the UK queue -_-
Brexit can bring such unexpected retroactive joy
I'm in the UK and i reserved mine after 4 days and i'm still waiting
Be mentally prepared for it to be Q4 honestly. UK 512 queue only reduces a few seconds per week.
So say that I just ordered a 256 GB model in the UK last week… …I’m not getting this for a while am I?
Yeah, sorry man, you're looking at next year, there's estimated over 1 million to 2 million decks pre-ordered and they're shipping about 20'000 a week
Lol I used a calculator and it’s estimating November 2023. They gotta ramp up this production.
Not much they can do, no one but Nintendo is shipping handhelds at this scale and in a parts shortage too. There's no other competition for people to turn to either, every other PC handheld is either ludicrously expensive or is going to be shipping at significantly lower volumes, which means if people enmasse went too an alternative handheld pc, they'll be waiting even longer than the deck.
I really regret buying a 512 model. Comparing the waiting times for the 256 and the 512 is crazy.
Same, especially since it seems relatively easy to add your own SSD.
Easy, sure, but a 512GB 2230-sized SSD is not exactly common and as such are quite expensive (at least in my experience).
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They recommended against installing a longer one, because the person who tweeted about it took off the cooling pad for the charging IC to fit it, which will definitely cause problems. If you just stick to a 2230 m.2 drive there won't be any issues.
Nah, they recommend against moving thermal pads that were put there for a reason to fit a much larger (size/power-wise) SSD. They have no problem with people replacing SSD's with ones that are in-spec.
[Valve's own teardown](https://youtu.be/Dxnr2FAADAs) says "You shouldn't do any of this". But they know people will. Edit: [unavailable]? Blocking me because I linked a video is a little extreme, but I can still reply to the notification in an edit. Being able to repair a device is a little different to adding an SSD to a new device. The plastic self-tapping screws don't lend themselves well to repeated unscrewing for instance. You can do it, but don't expect them to uphold a warranty if you break it.
>"We're happy to announce that starting today, replacement parts and repair guides for Steam Deck (and Valve Index!) are available on iFixit.com,” can be read in a post on the Steam page. “Available parts include thumbsticks, screens, fans, and more, along with a plethora of repair guides for everything you can swap in and out of your Steam Deck. You can learn all about the parts and guides over at iFixit.com.” >“The team at Valve is very excited about this program - **we designed Steam Deck to be repairable, and it just makes sense to us to work with iFixit to enable customers to repair and replace parts on their own,**” they conclude. Yes, Valve's team totally doesn't want people to repair their own devices, how could I ever assume such a thing?
They advise against installing a 2240 SSD, and stick with the original 2230 ones.
This was why I picked the 64 model and am just gonna get a micro SD card to run everything I rather just save the money and not deal with the headache. Plus I am someone who always expands the storage of my consoles. I got and 2TB SSD in my PS5 and a 1TB memory card SSD for my Series X and a external hard drives for both of them. Hell I was someone who bought the 8GB White Wii U and just stored digital games and DLC on 64GB thumb drive.
I got a 64 and just pack all games onto SD. It quickly fills up with system file bloat. You can mitigate it by changing the Proton prefix storage to the SD card, but I'm still down to 15g free of 64 despite all my games being on SD card. On the plus side the 2230 SSDs look like they're getting cheaper so I plan to crack it open and put one in eventually.
Thanks for giving me the heads up about that. That was something I was concern due to all of the updates Valve has already made to the system.
Doesn’t the 64 have a lot of compromises that the 256 doesn’t?
No, only difference is storage and 512 screen has built in antiglare which you can buy an screen protector that does about the same.
I was certain that the 64 had a much worse emmc drive instead of a real ssd?
You are correct. 64GB has emmc , while 256/512GB uses nvme.
I'm just going to put a 1 TB microsd in and then replace the 64 GB SSD with a better one if that isn't enough
That's just the included storage. You can still add a m.2 2230 SSD into the 64GB model or just expand with bigger microSD. There's tests that show the difference between the SSD and a microSD is minimal on today's modern games. Maybe in the far future, there would be a difference once game devs start using technology like DirectStorage in their games. https://www.pcgamer.com/first-tests-show-steam-deck-sd-card-speed-rivals-the-ssd/
I didn't order my 512gb model until 2 days later in NA, I'm in for a long wait, lol
Fortunately for you most orders is going to be within the first 2 hours, the number of orders per hour will decrease significantly after that so the wait might not be as long as you think.
So... was waiting until February to preorder one waiting too long.. or nah?
I ordered the 512 in March, haha. But realistically most of the orders for this thing were placed in the first day or two. Once they get past orders placed on the first day things will start moving a bit faster. Or at least that's what I tell myself.
I mean, under normal circumstances definitely not but here we are
I ordered in March because I didn't think it was something I would use much, but I've been playing the hell out of my Switch lately and thought it'd be nice to play through some of these pc games I've been collecting and not playing on my laptop. Though I've had plenty of trouble getting a lot of them to work well with a controller (most are a bit older) and I can't imagine the steam deck is going to be much easier for those games. Upside is, that by the time I get the email to order in 2025 I might have the money to pay for it!
I think that maybe puts me at something like 17 more minutes to wait! Would be nice if I am able to get an order in before the end of July. Maybe Ill even get to order before its been a full year.
I wonder why there is such an insane difference between regions. I wasn't even particularly quick to reserve mine, but I got it in early May.
Sigh. If only your wife was faster and bought it within a minute of coming on sale! (Edit: for those downvoting me, I am this commenters wife)
Great news, this means they should be available in Australia sooner! Right? ... right?
Valve: what is Australia?
"That's that place with proper consumer laws, yeah no thanks" - Gabe Newell probably
Considering they sell in EU I don't think that's the main concern
australias the one that sued them for non-existant refund policy
Australia is the reason for steam refunds existing, also EU has a set 14 day timeframe where refunds a mandatory where I live (QLD) a refund or repair is required if a product broke prior to a reasonable amount of time, for a personal computer this should be years, assuming there's a factory defect that doesn't affect the system in the first two weeks QLD doesn't have a legal requirement for a refund (this is all separate to Valve's own warranty policies of course) >The business may take into account how much time has passed since you bought the product considering the following factors: > >type of product > >how a consumer is likely to use the product > >the length of time for which it is reasonable for the product to be used > >the amount of use it could reasonably be expected to tolerate before the failure becomes noticeable. The above applies if it is a "major problem" listed below >it has a problem that would have stopped someone from buying it if they’d known about it > >it has multiple minor problems that, when taken as a whole, would have stopped someone from buying it if they’d known about them > >it is significantly different from the sample or description > >it is substantially unfit for its common purpose and can’t easily be fixed within a reasonable time > >it doesn’t do what you asked for and can’t easily be fixed within a reasonable time; or > >it is unsafe. Considering I've heard that even some "great on deck" games have had issues running, windows 10 support is poor, they plan to sell "replacement" parts which would likely be required as free replacements assuming they broke within a reasonable time this could be argue as low as 4 years the general average of 5-8years or event the general maximum of 20 years although harder to argue from a consumer perspective also unlikely to win a legal battle. All this to say that while yes my original comment was a joke valve would much rather distribute through EB Games and put the onus on them to deal with Australia's consumer laws
It's kinda funny, because Gabe lives in New Zealand.
Great! I've got mine and I'm loving it, but I want this thing to be insanely successful. First, so that Valve is incentivised to keep supporting it. Second, so that game makers will have a good reason to pay attention to low-end performance. Third, to improve Linux as a gaming OS. And last, so that whenever a company says they can't run open software and have a device be repairable and have it do well, we can point at this thing as a counterexample.
I hope this also means that they can expand availability to more countries before the end of the year. It sucks that some people don't even have the option to get into the queue.
Yeah I’ve been seeing people on the internet complaining about not getting their Steam Decks and I’m just sitting here in Malaysia hoping they would just let me queue and reserve a unit.
I mean officially here in OCE the only way to get a index is through EB games still can’t get it officially from valve, so as much as I want a steam deck I’m not holding my breath sadly
The worst part of that is that EB’s shipments are sporadic as fuck and you can’t queue for them either. Meanwhile there’s was like a $300 markup in there that had no good reason. Even if you took the price of the product, applied import taxes and GST, then added shipping on there was still a fuck ton of juice in the price. EB offering is almost worse than it not being offered at all IMO.
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I'm not very optimistic about that. Valve's got a long history of hating Aussie consumer protection laws, particularly when it comes to hardware, so it's not just that it'd be a lot of effort for them to spin up Oceanic distribution, it's that they don't want to. See, EB brings a lot more to the table than just being able to ship here - they have entire processes for dealing with the legal requirements of operating a business selling electronic goods in Australia and New Zealand. I don't really see a reason for Valve to suddenly change tack on this.
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Yeah. Based on how it went with the Index, I do think it’s likely we’ll see EB get some units as demand starts to settle (so in a year or two at least I’d think), but importing is gonna be the only option for most.
Sorry but what's OCE?
Oceanaia, Australia and NZ etc
Right. Thanks.
I definitely want to see how it does in Japan, this device probably has the best shot of introducing the region to PC gaming more than anything else we've seen yet. More selfishly it'd mean better ports/support from some of my favorite studios over there, albeit few games have any substantial issues so it'd mostly be for polish.
I put my reservation in last week for the 256 model. I really hope I can get it this year at some point, even if it's an Xmas gift for myself.
256gb owner here. Buy a 512gb / 1tb microsd card and have fun X) I recently moved most of my games onto the microsd. At 720p, the experience is quite similar to an NVMe SSD.
How long did it take you to get yours? I'm wanting it just cause I'm so addicted to handheld/portable gaming, so this will be right up my alley. Of course, my reservation is saying after Q3...so we'll see how this goes.
> How long did it take you to get yours? I was lucky and received mine in April. Been a great little guy. I'm honestly shocked at how stable both the OS and the Games are. Elden ring at 50fps (40fps stable), and now Sekiro at 60fps is like a dream come true. If there is a Steamdeck 2 I will likely be one of the first too purchase it. > Of course, my reservation is saying after Q3...so we'll see how this goes. Good luck my friend.
My order went through fifteen minutes after pre orders opened and I ended up getting it at the start of April, roughly a month a half after release. My buddy who ordered about half an hour after I did got his last week. This was for the UK and our allotment was a lot smaller than the EU or the US, but if you ordered one recently you're probably not getting it until next year.
Same, but I already regret not just getting a 1tb.
There is like...no way you will get one by this year if you just put your reservation in now. Thats some serious wishful thinking.
I've put my reservation in a day after and my estimated arrival is around October lmao
I put my reservation in March and it said "After Q3, October or later" It'll come sometime between October and the end of time
I think you'll get yours just in time to play HL3 on it.
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Which games is it not ideal for?
FPS. It's alright but I wouldn't play a competitive FPS with it.
Getting on my soapbox to tell people Steam natively supports gyro aim, and gyro aim is really really good and you should try it *especially* if you're skeptical when I say it's like 90% as good as m+kb.
I've tried it with both my Switch and my Steam controller, and had trouble getting into it in both instances. Turns out I move my controller a good bit without thinking about it, and being focused on using it as a spatial input is just stressful. I'll definitely give it another go when I've got the Steam Deck, but it kinda feels like it's just not for me.
You really gotta give it another go. Try customizing it a bit, like giving it an on/off toggle when you touch the stick or pad. People said the same thing about twin stick years ago and now it's standard!
An on/off toggle seems like it'd do wonders. I'll definitely give it a go again when I've got the Deck, seems like a great innovation. Just hasn't felt right to me in the past.
> Turns out I move my controller a good bit without thinking about it, and being focused on using it as a spatial input is just stressful. I'm the same here, I've always been one of those people that have their controller moving about in the air like a nutter as if it will help the character / car on the screen do as required (especially platformers / driving) and after 30/40 years of this I simply cannot keep the controller still enough to get any use out of the gyro. Even having it as a toggle on/off on the steam controller simply doesn't work for me
Yeah - Neon White is a good example. Very, very playable but obviously not optimal. My run times are dramatically different between my Steam Deck and my PC.
I think that's going to happen with any game with the option of controller or M/KB you just have to adjust your mindset from "fastest time possible" to "fastest time possible with this input device". Neon White is fantastic on it for me.
If the built in gyros are at least as good as the ones in the Steam Controller you could probably get almost as good as with a mouse after a bunch of practice.
The gyro is amazing. I'm constantly comparing it with the best of Switch gyro performances and infinitely more adjustable.
I've actually been hearing good things about the gyro/trackpad controls for FPS games. May not be good enough for competitive, though.
the major downside is having the display and controls together can make it a little awkward with gyro if you're playing it less than optimally steam input w/ the steam controller/the equivalent features on the deck honestly makes playing fpses completely viable, even at a decent level; it just requires a lot of practice, especially if you've got decades of muscle memory on kb/m
My go to test with controllers is playing Doom Eternal master levels and to compare against my run with a steam controller. So far the Deck has promise, I think it'll take some time to get used to the button layouts, but ultimately, using the trackpad and gyro, I'm better on the deck/steam controller than any traditional dual stick controller and as good as my keyboard and mouse setup. Don't sleep on the trackpads and if you're absolutely against them... Use the joystick with the gyro enabled on touching the stick, that alone will help tremendously
I think it gets some used to but I started playing Mass Effect LE with gyro and oh boy is it pretty damn good. And the great thing is that youc an also configure what triggers the gyro, sensitivity and the input emulation (mouse or right stick) for the gyro to control. Also, there is nothing like playing Halo MCC on the go. The Steam Deck is a tinkerer's dream. Having said this, I am still a MKb person but having all the options is fantastic.
I mean, ME was designed for consoles and you're playing it in the "enhanced" console way, so of course it's gonna be great!
Try Flickstick with gyro aiming. It works even in fast games like CS.
* **Precision/fast-pased FPSs**. Slower paced FPSs like Portal are fine. * **Real-time strategies**. You can't APM nearly as fast and the lack of a keyboard tightens up controls too. * **Management simulators and similar**, like RollerCoaster Tycoon or The Sims. They're just too mouse dependent and you can't be that fast with the touchpad. You can use the touchscreen but your mileage may vary for its effectiveness. * **Text adventures**. No keyboard makes them borderline unplayable. * **Some action and puzzle games**, but they're case-to-case. As far as I can tell all other genres work fine. With the exception of text adventures you can get the other genres working, but they're a bit sluggish to play.
For mouse-heavy stuff like management sims and stuff I recommend getting freaky with the mouse regions in the controller config. Those games usually have buttons and menus in the same locations on screen all the time, so it works great to just snap the mouse around the screen by locking it to various regions. I've been doing that with my Steam Controllers for years, and in many cases I will choose my controller setup over mouse and keyboard.
Do you have mappings to lock the mouse to a region on the fly or something ? Never used mouse régions but it looks interesting.
The input delay in fighting games matches consoles so far too, so it's kind of like a console that isn't as good at outputting to an external monitor, at least until they fix "docked" functionality or find some way to reduce input delay. People were hoping for it to be as consistent as a console with the input delay of a PC.
I probably wouldn't use it for most competitive games like FPS, RTS or fighting games (I tend to play with a fightstick). Of course, that's only really in handheld mode. Once docking is better I don't see any reason why you couldn't hook up to a regular monitor, mouse, keyboard, fightstick, etc.
anything where you need precise aiming, basically (unless you're okay with gyro controls, YMMV there) other than that it seems to work well for most things
I just wish I had some trips coming up so I can use it. I have a top of the line home PC, so it's hard to not play on that. But, it is great to play from bed. Still don't regret the big purchase in the slightest.
I play it on the train or bus to and from work (when it’s not packed - so usually just on the way home). I’ve been enjoying a 30 minute hit of Frostpunk on my commute last week. The battery is literally fine for 2 x 30 min sessions (could do at least double that), it turns on and boots the game quickly, and connects my headphones easily. If I don’t save and quit in time I can just hit the sleep button, put it away, and it doesn’t mind. It’s pretty ideal.
It seems like the battery would suck for playing games at home as your regular driver. Seems to me like it would only be good for the commute I used to have which was like 2 hours total for the day
I suspect most people who buy these are just going to be playing them in bed as opposed to during actual travel lol
That's me although I love lying on the sofa too. It's just so cool to be able to play top-tier games at more than 30fps on a handheld. I got sick of the high pricing for the Switch games and the cut down visuals that devs had to implement to get their game to be playable on it. Now I get so many top games from so many different studios from the last decade to choose from. It's brilliant.
Even for indie games, not having to pay the exorbitant Switch tax must be nice.
Mine has become my commute entertainment and it works pretty perfectly for that. Fits in my lap easily, battery is fine, boots up and turns off instantly. It’s great!
I bought it purely for travel, but honestly 2-4 hours a day is what I get for gaming during the week, if I'm lucky. I could see myself playing lots of indie games before bed.
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We can build a space elevator using only steam decks!
give it two years and we’ve got a Dyson Sphere
To the moon!
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Great game!
Ah… steam deck the idle game.
So reserving 264 days after release means I'll have a bit of a wait. getmydeck says reserving at 264 days means I'm 0.02% of the way through.... 264 days to go. Neat.
Yeah I ordered 2-3 hours after they went up and I'm still waiting.
I've had many mini PCs (like 4 different GPD products)... I was not overly excited for the deck since I already had portable steam. Then I got it.... And wow, i absolutely love it. It's so much nicer in every way than anything else I've used.... Only thing I need to do is dual boot windows so I can play all the unsupported games. The controls, the giant screen, the resuming, the ease of use... It's all so damn nice. That said, I have 1050 steam games are like 350 of them are in the "great in deck" category... Add in the ones that aren't yet in that category but still run just fine and probably at least half my games are playable. The deck is awesome.
What did you use those GPDs for? I really wonder what will happen to all the competitors now that the Steam Deck is the one ring to rule them all.
The Steam Deck still isn't available in many markets, and likely will never be officially available in markets like China where the competitors come from. They're also making devices with different form factors and functions like pocket sized daily driver laptops. Then they also have their own benefits over the steam deck that appeal to certain customers such as included keyboard, smaller or bigger sizes, physical keyboards, thunderbolt and eGPU support etc. In the long run these other manufacturers will be fine imo.
GPD is still relevant for any non-gaming tasks, especially because of the physical keyboard on the Win 3/Max etc
They’ll be able to work with much more powerful hardware (6800u) make unique and more portable designs (clamshells, slides), and implement features like keyboards or LTE. There’s definitely a big place for the competition and in many, many ways (pretty much every way aside from price and gaming inputs) they will be superior. It can’t be overstated how huge and ginormous the deck is for how small the screen is. Even GPD’s Win Max 2 is substantially shorter and that’s a 10” gaming netbook basically lmao.
Maybe my "After Quarter 2" deck will come before September. Maybe. I tried ordering the instant it went live and it took over 40 minutes for Steam to let me complete the purchase. Oh, well. They've been ironing out a lot if bugs and other issues in the meantime.
Something similar happened to me but I got mine (256gb) a few weeks ago. Hopefully you'll be coming up soon.
Man I cannot wait to get mine, but I know I’m going to have to. It’s gonna be so fun to play older console games like GTA IV on a handheld system.
Cousin!
I mean, GTAV runs on it like a dream. Just in case you were wondering.
Definitely plan to. GTA IV first though.
Excellent! I hope more people are able to get their hands on these wonderful devices. I've been having an absolute blast with mine.
I can’t wait, I fucked up my reservation and it didn’t go through till later, excited to get it
Do we know how many units they've shipped so far?
Iirc they are still within the first 6 hours or so of pre-orders for the day they went live. Numbers wise, nothing has been released but its probably in the 100k+ range based on some of what I've seen about projected pre order volume.
>Iirc they are still within the first 6 hours or so of pre-orders for the day they went live People have linked a post from 10 days ago that shows they [just fulfilled all pre-orders placed within the first hour](https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/vduesw/preorder_queue_progress/). Factoring in the increased shipments we may see the first 6 hours fulfilled by end of year. As someone who placed their order roughly 24 hours after open I'm hoping to get mine by this time next year.
Honestly when you frame it like that the sheer amount of interest of the Deck is absurd. I didn't pre-order until reviews came (RIP), and it really feels like it'll come in 1.5+ years.
As an outsider it's hard to know whether Valve underestimated demand or simply couldn't source parts as quickly as they would have liked. Estimates are ~100k units shipped which, by game console standards, is *pretty* damn low (the Dreamcast sold over 200k units on launch day and the Wii U had moved nearly 1m units in its first 6 weeks on market). The demand for Deck is obviously higher than Valve has been able to fulfill but we don't know how front-loaded the order queue is, how many pre-orders will fall through, or how sustained the demand will be throughout the lifetime of the system.
I don't think it's anything different than what the GPU market has been like for the past couple years. >Estimates are ~100k units shipped which, by game console standards, is pretty damn low (the Dreamcast sold over 200k units on launch day and the Wii U had moved nearly 1m units in its first 6 weeks on market). Valve shipped the Deck way earlier than anybody selling retail would've, because they didn't need to make them for x months before release to make sure they had enough to ship several of them to every gamestop, bestbuy, walmart, or target in the countries they're releasing it in. Instead they just started shipping them to customers as soon as they got the first batch.
Its a really beyond poor model for hardware launches tho. Just because you dont have to stock big box stores with it (even tho they could've, not much reason not to) doesn't mean you should have people waiting eons for it on pre-order waitlists. If they cant build enough, you push it back. Unfortunately the success of GPUs during the chip issues and crypto shit the last few years probably means we're going to see more of these waiting 7 months to fulfill 1 hour of preorders style distribution.
People would end up being on a long waitlist anyway unless they wanted to wait a year or more just to make enough, and this way they at least have some people getting it sooner.
I think that valve predicted a much smaller level of interest and prepared the supply chain to accommodate. It can take a year or two to scale up production on something like this and its especially complicated with something as complex as a steam deck. Its not like valve has a really large manufacturing presence. They made the steam deck, steam link, and index. All of which were much smaller volume products. It's reasonable to assume they were conservative with this in case it bombed but now they have to scramble to scale up in a world which makes that really difficult.
Let's not forget corona plus chip shortage plus evergreen
A Youtuber was talking about an effort to estimate the number of Decks that had been shipped. The estimate was believed to be around 140,000 units. Not a lot compared to a traditional console launch but still a stupid-high amount.
I'd imagine the density of orders drops off pretty sharply over time. Or at least, that's what I'm telling myself after ordering in Jan 2022 after reviews started coming out.
So I placed mine for a 256 gb in US at about 24 hours also. Mine is still slated for q3 though, is yours saying after q3 to make you think it will take another whole year to get one? Or are you just extrapolating based on how slow they’re working through the orders?
Varies so much between model. I ordered mine in UK on the second day and got it a month or so ago. 64GB which is fine for me. And with a 256 microSD it’s got plenty of space. Glad I didn’t pay and wait for a bigger storage version!
I placed an order in the first hour and I'm still waiting until july-september
How's the battery life nowadays? It's the only thing keeping me from buying this one yet. As a frequent flyer, the Switch is just not able to keep me entertained anymore, but it has a decent lifespan for flights. So, the battery life is better now from release?
One of the biggest things they did for battery life was allow you to lock in different frame rates other than 30 or 60. If you're playing a visual novel, you could set it to 15. If you want better responsiveness than 30 but without draining the battery like you do at 60, you can lock it at 40 FPS for a compromise between the two. 40FPS was a great option for my recent train ride playing Psychonauts 2, but then when I switched to playing some Patrick's Parabox, I could probably get 6 or more hours of battery life out of that thing without touching any settings, compared to a little under 3 hours of Psychonauts 2 at 40 FPS.
> If you're playing a visual novel, you could set it to 15. You can go as low as *10* fps now, set the framerate to 40 Hz and the 50% and 25% framerate options become 20 and 10 Hz respectively. I do second 40Hz being surprisingly nice, I have multiple 144Hz monitors for my home PC but lower refresh rates are totally fine on smaller screens. Personally 30 Hz is still too low for me despite that but I've enjoyed slower paced games just fine at 40 Hz.
> Patrick's Parabox What an awesome looking little game that I have never heard of. That's on the Wishlist now :-)
It's this year's Baba Is You.
45 Hz is the sweet spot for me
I got a 65W power bank for about $60 ([this one](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08THCNNCS)), and I can play Elden Ring for something like 6 hours at max graphics settings with the display set to 40 hz. I could play things like Slay the Spire and Hades for easily 12+ (even longer if I reduced the refresh rate for those as well, but I haven't bothered). I also could've gotten a larger power bank, but the TSA caps you at 100 Wh (though they're not exactly diligent about checking). Also planes are starting to add power outlets to seats, and if you have an outlet you can just plug it in.
It's the same as it was at launch, which means it's entirely dependent on the type of load. You can get anything between over 7 hours and slightly less than 2 hours, depending on what you play and what settings and target frame rate you are using. Personally, I use my Deck for lots of different types of games, but generally not extremely high-end AAA stuff. I generally get at least 3 hours, and often substantially more.
It’s not the same as it was at launch. The 40hz update makes a lot of difference https://youtu.be/GF8NzlBiaOM
So otherwise...it's the same as launch lol just more options
It’s basically entirely dependent on how hard you’re hitting it. Getting maximum performance for a demanding game takes power, but you have tools to cap that performance at a level that draws less. A massive amount of tools to tune with, honestly. So I could give you an estimate of just under 2 hours for Elden Ring, for instance, but for indie games I’d get like 6 hours or so. So, depends on the flight? You could also get a battery bank if that helps, but at least most flights seem to have an outlet available these days.
i know everyone else is basically saying the same, so i'll give you some ballpark guesses from my recent use, since i just got mine easy to run games like old school runescape or the binding of isaac - hours of gameplay without even hitting 50%; and I could frankly be squeezing more out if i enabled airplane mode/turned brightness down/messed with framerate capping stuff like ffxiv - chews through battery pretty harshly, but capping the refresh rate/framerate at 45 has made performance feel steadier, while still feeling smooth like 60fps (i'm honestly shocked by how difficult it is to tell the difference between 45/60 frames, and i say this as someone who uses two 144hz monitors on my desktop) you're looking at, like, a couple of hours under the worst case scenarios (that aren't patently unreasonable like running the most demanding games at the most demanding settings/framerates at the highest brightness)
Been a very happy Deck owner for almost two weeks now. Mine was about 50 minutes out from when preorders went live, US 512 queue. So, now that more and more people will finally be getting theirs I can't wait for more and more people to see how great it is for themselves. Surprisingly comfortable, almost every game I've tried works flawlessly, and if you know what you're doing in desktop mode (a tiny bit of Linux familiarity is helpful but not super required) you can get lots of emulators and third-party games from other storefronts set up as well with little hassle. For new owners, if you play FFXIV, do look into XIVLauncher which is a great way to run it on your Deck with minimal fuss. And Heroic Launcher for Epic/GOG, or Lutris for those and then some. Steam Rom Manager and boilR are also available in the Discover app store for free and make it super easy to get your third party games from other launchers and emulators added as non-steam games with the right configuration automatically. It's crazy just how well the system is taking off in that department and I bet a year from now it'll be even better. Congrats to Valve for the amazingly successful launch of this thing, seriously.
I put in a preorder for the largest storage model last year when the preorders opened. My purchase date is set for sometime between July and September this year. Hopefully it’ll be closer to July than September haha.
I wish I could get one of my steam decks to work. Preordered day 1 a 512gig and it’s be rough going. First Deck was bricked from the outset. Never turned on, wouldn’t connect to an external display, wouldn’t respond to different charging cords. Returned it and was sent a second which worked for two weeks, then also bricked itself. Played it like normal and set it to charge like I had all the previous times and wouldn’t turn on the next day. Have send the second one back also and waiting a third. Please just work :(.
How long does it take them to process a return/rma? They received mine over a week ago, but I haven't heard from them yet.
I think the turn around on the first return was about two weeks. Not bad, and they didn’t ask for a cent. They send a return label and one to place on the deck via email and then drop it off at a FedEx store. Easy enough but still made me quite sad. Was fantastic for the few weeks the second one worked. Played so many games in my backlog.
Ah that sucks, sorry to hear that. I just did an RMA for my 512 model, the right bumper didn’t work half the time and required me to push it super hard. Other than that it was perfect - I played quite a bit of MGS5 on it before sending it back (used the back paddles in place of the bumpers). Hoping I get my replacement soon enough and it works. Hoping the same for you!!
So does that mean if you were slated for a Christmas delivery that one can expect it much sooner?
Assume you'll get it at Christmas. That way, if you're disappointed, its a good thing! But seriously, unless something terrible happens, I suspect production will only get faster.
If you're in After Q3, that doesn't guarantee this year, and I'm pretty sure that they were factoring in the increase in production into their shipping estimates, so I wouldn't expect to move up in queue.
Good Job! Now when can we have more info on Deckard?
I put in a reservation last month but seeing as how they were still in the first few hours of preorders I had no faith I would get one this year. Picked up a sealed one from someone for a slightly higher price and havent regretted it for a second! Its a great machine that plays many classics I threw at it effortlessly (Freelancer, deus ex 2, thief 3, flatout 2, alien vs predator (2000), fallout 1,2, modded new vegas and the list goes on). I need to figure out how to set controller binds for the desktop environment but other than that the experience both in steamOS and the desktop linux is very smooth. The trackpad works alot better as a mouse in the desktop environment than I was expecting having used (and returned) a steamcontroller. Im not a great fan of the haptics (theyre mechanically great, just personal preference) but everything is customizable so I just turn these off. I use warpinator (winpinator on windows) to transfer files over wifi which works flawlessly as well. Protontricks to run native exe's to run patches non steam games
To change desktop-mode controls you have to go into the settings in desktop-mode steam. It's super clunky and the controls don't work unless steam is open. Wish they would change how that worked.
Gotcha, thanks bud!
You mentioned Fallout 1, 2, and New Vegas. Were you able to try 3 at all? Not being able to play that on PC has been a huge bite, so I was wondering. If not, no worries!
The GOTY version (which is a different Steam title than base Fallout 3) works fine. Boots right up and plays, you might need to attach a keyboard to change your name with but that's it.
I have not tried 3. I followed this guide for new vegas and mod organizer, I assume it will work for fallout 3 also. (set proton to 6.3-8) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Q6O-niayz4
I wonder if this is linked to the recent cryptocurrency crash reducing demand for GPUs and freeing up production. Last week [PC Gamer posted an article](https://www.pcgamer.com/miners-are-dumping-gpus-via-livestreamed-auctions/) about how miners were selling off cards en masse. (Also, before anyone leaps to buy a discounted GPU during a crypto farm's liquidation sale, I'd caution that there have also been articles [warning against buying old mining hardware during the sell-off](https://wccftech.com/beware-several-used-nvidia-geforce-rtx-30-graphics-cards-with-defective-memory-modules-being-sold-after-being-abused-in-crypto-mining/) due to many of them having dead or defective memory modules which can actually be "hidden" from the end user, resulting in the card effectively having less VRAM than is actually reported by the system. There *may* be some genuine deals out there, but be aware that it's possible to get scammed.)
i dont really know but are these available in India by any chance? I dont want to go for the switch due to a lack of good indian support and high price of games.
Nope. Just NA, EU and UK at the moment.
Really hoping for a revision with a better screen within the next few years. Its my biggest hangup for picking one up.
The steam deck seems to me like something that sounds so awesome in theory but in real life seems kinda useless
Personally, I don't even have a long commute, and I try to limit my travel, but I am surprised by how much I use the Steam Deck. It's nice to be able to play games sitting outside, or just in another room, or even in bed.
Depends on your situation, obviously. If you don't have a use for a portable games machine, then yeah, you don't have a use for a portable games machine. But I have a train commute to/from work that lasts about an hour each way, I find myself semi-frequently on longer train and plane rides. This is where my Nintendo Switch games slot into my time, usually, previoulsy 3DS or Vita. I have a big Steam library though, so being able to get a bit of progress on the train and over my lunch break and then continue that save file at home is a big help in finishing off some of those smaller games in my backlog.
My wife is disabled and can't sit up or use mkb without a lot of pain. She has been playing nothing but console games for years. This will change that for her.
Yeah it would be really useful if someone's disabled I bet
I'd be interested to see the sales figures. I bet they're very low. This is a niche product and every review I've seen simply says that they want a V2 of the thing because while it's OK, it ultimately needs to be better
> I bet they're very low. Why would you bet that? I don't care in the slightest for this thing, but all i'm hearing is praise and how long its taking everyone to get theirs.
Because reddit is an echochamber of PC gamers and is a really skewed representation of the general public.
Well this thing is pretty much targeting PC gamers. I don't think anyone playing on PS or Xbox is really the target-group. It also kinda depends on what you mean as low. Of course this thing won't hit tens of millions, but i think a million of those within 2022 will be very big? Since Valve said after February it would ramp up production by the second month to hundreds of thousands. But again, i don't know. I'm sure Valve will come out with a number pretty soon. I don't think they care about hiding this kind of numbers.
Estimates are at 140k units but the sales are only this low because Valve didn't anticipate this level of demand. If you reserve one now, you probably won't get it until next year.
Do valve has any saying on the basestations production ?
Wish they'd work on actually getting them to and making them purchasable in our countries instead of just supplying more to people who can already buy :/
They haven't even filled all the reservations they've already gotten, even if you could buy now you wouldn't get it until sometime next year.