Steam Deck and Playdate running late

Steam Deck. © Valve.

Bad news for gamers who were waiting for a Steam Deck or a Playdate in time for the holidays. Valve has postponed the launch of the Steam Deck, its highly anticipated portable PC-console, by two months. The device was slated to launch in December, but Valve now estimates that the first orders won’t start shipping until next February. “We’re sorry about this — we did our best to work around the global supply chain issues, but due to material shortages, components aren’t reaching our manufacturing facilities in time for us to meet our initial launch dates,” wrote Valve in a blog post. Customers who pre-ordered should have received an email informing them of the delay. The Steam Deck was highly successful, with over 100,000 orders in the first 90 minutes of pre-sales alone. Valve has not released the total number of units ordered to date.

Playdate. © Panic.

For its part, delivery of the Playdate, the unusual little monochrome hand-crank console, has also been postponed to early next year. It seems that this is primarily a manufacturing issue. Panic, its maker, revealed that the first units shipped with batteries that were not working properly, so they were sent back to Malaysia for new batteries. It also admitted that it too was significantly affected by the global chip shortage and was working on a redesign of the motherboard to use more readily available components. If you pre-ordered a Playdate, you should receive an email with the new estimated ship date.

And if you want to switch to a Switch, don’t delay. According to Nintendo, the console will become harder to find as the holidays approach.

⇨ The Verge, Jay Peters, “Panic’s Playdate handheld delayed to early 2022.”

⇨ The Verge, Jay Peters, “Steam Deck launch delayed by two months.”

2021-11-11