Unsurprisingly, it's the shortage of components and the lengthy delays in the supply chains that have pushed Valve to this postponement.
Officialized on July 15, when no one expected it, the Steam Deck is a new way of approaching video games on PC imagined by Valve. The developer of the number one platform for PC games - Steam - has actually had the idea of offering us a kind of PC "with a Switch sauce". Called Steam Deck, its machine takes the shape of Nintendo's console and focuses on mobility. It is designed around a large LCD screen with a diagonal of 7 inches whose image definition has been deliberately limited to 1280 x 800 pixels.
The machine is also based on an APU signed AMD and equipped with 4 cores Zen 2 / 8 threads clocked at 2.4 / 3.5 GHz. On the graphics side, it is of course RDNA 2 that is on the menu with 8 CPUs and a frequency of 1 / 1.6 GHz. Valve decided to offer 16 GB of LPDDR5 to support the main components. All in all, Valve announces that it will be possible to play with the vast majority of games available on Steam. To do this, we will be able to count on a 64 GB eMMC on the cheapest version of the Steam Deck and a 256 GB / 512 GB SSD on the other two.
Alas, while these three models were supposed to begin shipping to their buyers in the coming weeks - there was talk of a December delivery - Valve has revised its copy. The information is published directly on the Steam website and leaves little room for interpretation.
" The launch of Steam Deck has been delayed by two months. We apologize for the delay. We've done our best to work around global supply chain issues, but due to a shortage of materials, components are not arriving at our manufacturing facilities in time for us to meet the original launch dates. We have updated our manufacturing time estimates and believe that the first Steam Deck deliveries should be able to be honored in February 2022, the new start date for the reservation queue. You will retain your place in the queue, but the associated order dates will shift accordingly. They will be updated shortly after this announcement. We apologize again for the delay and will do our best to improve this new reservation schedule. We will continue to keep you informed of its evolution over time.
