If you're sat in the long queue for a Valve Steam Deck then designer, Lawrence Yang, has some positive words of encouragement, mainly regarding how many Decks the company is going to be producing now that we've had an effective launch of the device. Speaking with IGN (via Forbes) he says the company expects the launch to «ramp very quickly» and that by the second month hundreds of thousands of Decks will be filing off the production line.
We're big fans of the Steam Deck here on PC Gamer, it's one of the most versatile gaming PCs we've had our hands on and its huge potential currently outweighs the not-quite-there-yet nature of the software. Ever as it was with SteamOS, eh? Our biggest concern, beyond even the Steam Deck battery life, or the noise it makes, is whether Valve is really capable of making enough to satisfy demand.
«We had to delay for supply chain reasons,» says Yang, «those continue to be issues, but we are surmounting them. We imagine that the launch is going to ramp, in production terms, it'll ramp very quickly.
»In the first month very quickly we'll be in the tens of thousands, by the second month we'll be in the hundreds of thousands. And beyond that it'll grow even quicker."
That certainly gives us hope that this impressive chonky boi handheld will actually be able to get into the hands of the gamers that want it.
Still, even hitting hundreds of thousands of units in the second month, and more beyond that, Gabe himself still feels unable to say when you might be able to make that impulse Deck purchase and have the device in your hands within just a delivery time window, rather than waiting for your place in a queue.
Steam Deck review: Our verdict on Valve's handheld PC.Steam Deck availability: How to
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