Valve just tweeted out some great news for SteamDeck fans, saying it has more than doubled the number of Steam Decks being produced every week. The company also says it just sent out the last batch of Q2 reservation emails and is prepared to start kicking off Q3 reservations on the 30th — or in three days.
If you want to purchase a Steam Deck, now is s good time sign up. With production numbers more than doubling, Steam Deck consoles should be arriving to customers much sooner than before. That said, the expected availability date has not changed and still says “October 2022 or later.” But there is a chance this date will change with production ramping up, since the date has remained the same for months.
It isn’t at all surprising that Valve is heavily increasing production. According to Valve, the Steam Deck has already become Steam’s Top Seller since April and outperforms actual games sold on Steam such as Elden Ring which sits at second place. This shows there is huge demand for the Steam Deck, and Valve probably needed to increase production anyways to make sure reservation queue times stay as low as possible.
Hello! Some great news on the production front. We just sent the last batch of Q2 emails, and we’ll start sending Q3 reservation emails on the 30th. Production has picked up, and after today we’ll be shipping more than double the number of Steam Decks every week! pic.twitter.com/kAHE0zRrV7June 27, 2022
With GPU shortages easing and demand now equalizing, it’s possible Valve is able to purchase a higher quantity of Van Gogh SoCs from AMD, the chip that powers the Steam Deck.
Steam Deck prices have not changed since launch, starting at $399.99 for the baseline 64GB eMMC model. Stepping up to the mid-range model will cost you $529, but that will get you 256GB of much faster NVMe storage and a Steam Community profile bundle. Finally, the flagship model comes in at $649 featuring a 512GB NVMe drive with an anti-glare etched glass screen (which we found isn’t that durable) an exclusive carrying case and an exclusive virtual keyboard theme. Reservations start at $5 for all three models.
For in-depth details about the Steam Deck, and its gaming performance, check out our review of Valve’s console here.