If, like me, you’ve been eyeing a Steam Deck for the past year but were using by the lengthy waiting list as a reason to not yet place an order, you now have one less excuse for not buying it: Valve announced today that they’ve fulfilled every order in the reservation queue, which means you can go to their website right now and buy one.
And that’s not all you can buy while you’re at it: Valve also announced a Docking Station for the Steam Deck, which will cost $89 USD (that’s $119 if, also like me, you’re Canadian). The station will feature 3 USB-A 3.1 Gen1 ports, a USB-C port for power, a DisplayPort, HDMI, and a Gigabit Ethernet port — which means if you’ve ever wanted to have your Steam Deck plugged in and connected to two TVs, you can now do so. Just like the Deck itself, the Docking Station is available for purchase now, though they note that they may switch to a reservation system if they get swamped with orders.
On top of that, Valve also announced a number of UI improvements, like quick links to Achievements and Guides. You can read all about them below, or watch the snazzy video Valve put together with all today’s news!
Steam Deck is available now, without reservation!We’re happy to announce that with today?s batch of order emails, we have completed our reservation queue. We are now in-stock and Steam Deck is available for purchase!
It’s been more than a year since Steam Deck was first announced. Since day one we’ve been dealing with numerous supply chain issues and component shortages. While the team worked to resolve these issues and catch up with demand, we implemented a reservation system. This system enabled customers to save their spot in line without having to worry about refreshing pages, fighting scripts, or battling bots.
The team has worked hard over the past year to address shortages and solve logistics issues, and because of these efforts we’re now manufacturing and shipping Steam Decks at our highest rate ever. Despite the ever-increasing reservation rate, we’ve been able to beat our shipping estimates, and as of today, finally complete the queue.
Having said all that, our production, processing, and shipping bandwidth is still finite. If order volume for a specific model of Steam Deck grows higher than our ability to ship it in a timely manner, delivery estimates will lengthen, and at a certain point we?ll flip back into reservation mode until we?re able to catch up. Just as before, customers will have their place in line saved, and they’ll receive an email when their order is ready. Once we?ve caught up and served all outstanding reservations, we?ll flip back into taking orders.
We’re excited to reach this important milestone, and will be shipping these out to you as fast as we can.
The official Docking Station is here!With 3 USB-A 3.1 Gen1 ports, a USB-C port for power, DisplayPort, HDMI, and a Gigabit Ethernet port, the Docking Station has all the connectivity you’ll need. It’s the perfect way to connect your Steam Deck to power, up to two external displays, and any number of other peripherals.
If having the official Dock isn’t that important to you, you’re welcome to use any other USB-C dock or hub. The work we did on SteamOS to make the Docking Station work great with Steam Deck helps improve compatibility with other 3rd party hubs and docks as well.
The Docking Station is available for purchase now! Learn more about it here, or order one here.
As with Steam Deck, the Docking Station is under the same processing and shipping bandwidth constraints – if order volume is extremely high, we will flip into reservation mode until we catch up. We’re glad to finally be able to get the Docking Station into customer hands, thank you for your patience!
Steam Deck software updatesThe team has continued updating and improving Steam Deck’s software over the last few months ? here are a few highlights of what we’ve shipped:
User interface and experience improvements
We’ve improved the in-game experience by adding quick links to Achievements and Guides to the overlay. The media page where screenshots are stored has been redesigned and improved to be much more performant. Night mode can now be automatically scheduled to turn on and off at different times of the day. And Offline Mode has undergone a series of improvements to make it much more stable and intuitive to use.New Steam Input features
In addition to a slew of bug fixes and UI improvements, Mode Shifts are now supported, and Steam Input virtual menus have been completely refreshed and redesigned. Now you can name virtual menus, move them between different sources, and have more control over icons and colors.More keyboards and improved experience
To prepare for our launch in new regions, we’ve added on-screen keyboard support for Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. In addition, there have been big improvements to touchscreen and trackpad on-screen keyboard typing and responsiveness – both in Gaming mode and Desktop mode.System updates
SteamOS, drivers, and firmware have all been updated to improve performance and stability across Steam Deck. In addition, to help folks keep track of system updates and betas (if you choose to participate in testing), we’ve added new, simpler update channels ? Stable, Beta, and Preview.Docked mode overhaul
We’ve been focused on a bunch of UI, software, and OS updates to improve the docked experience – not only for the official Docking Station, but for all connected docks, hubs, and peripherals. The team has added scaling, resolution, and refresh rate settings for external displays, as well as broad compatibility for external displays, peripherals, and audio-out scenarios.Steam Deck reservations open in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Hong KongOne other byproduct of us scaling production is our ability to expand to other regions. Recently we started taking reservations in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong through Komodo, our distribution partner in these regions. To celebrate the launch and spread the word, we recently went to the Tokyo Game Show and brought a giant Steam Deck with us, which was pretty cool.
If you?re in one of these regions and would like to reserve a Steam Deck, you can do so via Komodo at this website. We are continuing to push on expanding Steam Deck’s reach to more places around the world, and will share more when we have additional details.
That’s it for today, until next time!