Valve has announced today that their hotly anticipated handheld, the Steam Deck, has been delayed until 2022.
Sadly, every company making computing hardware has been facing component shortages and various shipping delays and it seems that Valve has been unable to get around it. They said "The launch of Steam Deck will be delayed by two months. 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.".
So now, instead of December 2021 the first set of order invitations will go out to customers in February 2022. That is the new starting point, with everyone being shifted (ours is now saying Q2 2022).
Valve apologised and mentioned they will "continue working to improve reservation dates based on the new timeline, and will keep folks updated as we go".
While it's a huge shame, there is a positive side to this. A delay gives Valve plenty more time to get Steam Play Proton into a state where it can run even more games, and run them with good performance too. It's been a struggle for some multiplayer games with the various anti-cheat systems, even with the recent announcements for Easy Anti-Cheat and BattlEye, not many developers are willing to confirm their support for it just yet.
As before you can visit the Steam Deck page to see when yours will hopefully be available.
Quoting: Purple Library GuyLinus Tech Tips video about problems running Linux got 1.1 million views;
Yes however Linus was having issues, James seemed to have had a relatively decent experience.
Also Linus fails to read a few obvious things on the screen, in POP!Os it clearly says its going to remove EVERYTHING if he goes ahead and installs steam, obviously a bug, but you should always take a photo of said stuff so you can reinstall it afterwards and save the install.
BUT that is probably asking too much from a casual user who is obviously of whats happening on screen.
Also when Linus installs Manjaro he complains about no audio but fails to understand how audio device switching works on Plasma and he clearly shows a screen where he DOESN'T have this exotic windows only support soundboard selected. (if he selected it he'd at least get sound)
But I think Linus is a good example of your typical user who would install Linux and proceed to not read or understand a single damn thing like their looking at Chinese writings or something! (even tho its all in English, go figure)
I've met people from ages 24 and up who fail to read and comprehend EXTREMELY basic instructions and details on screen. Its like their brain fails to work when looking at the monitor, its puzzling!
Quoting: SolitaryQuoting: elmapulQuoting: Solitaryfair enough, i just think we cant afford to lose sales, its the do it or die moment for linux gaming.Quoting: elmapulomg, they will miss the christmas! this is a HUGE deal, most of the sales happen in christmas!People who managed to get december date probably didn't buy it by accident and to cancel it afterwards. If they cancel it because of that then I say more and sooner for the rest of us down the line.
source:
https://www.vgchartz.com/tools/hw_date.php
i hope not many people cancel their pre order because they were planing to give it to someone else as christmas present, and cant anymore!
on the other hand, the less people who nuke steamOS from it to install windows because an certain game didnt worked, the better.
i think they delayed because they realized proton was not ready for the prime time, it still need more games , hopefully they wont delay it again and this will have more positive side effects than negative.
I really wouldn't worry about cancelled orders, if those happen they won't make a dent. There is so much more people at the end of the queue. It shouldn't matter if this product is suppose to be even remotely successful. If few people canceling would be an issue then the whole Deck has bigger problems already. Once it's out and the reviews are favorable (as the teasers and generally reports from people who had the chance to try one) suggest, people will start ordering them more freely.
im using the console market as reference, i know its "an pc" but at the same time, it will be competing with the likes of switch for the consumers pocket.
in the console market, any big mistake that companies do, can kill the product if the companies dont act fast.
its a matter of set things in motion and keep acelerating fast.
an console who is smaller but growing faster may attract more developers than other who already have more sales depending on the difference of numbers.
i know a lot of things are different in that case, i just dont lik e the idea of having to wait another 5 years for valve to try again.
Quoting: Comandante ÑoñardoThey can blame the IC shortage, but PROTON is not ready and a lot of big games won't run.
My bet is on this as well.
Quoting: CatKillerQuoting: Purple Library GuyA couple extra months could make a significant difference.It does mean that 5.16 (with lots of handy dandy stuff for Van Gogh and the Deck) will be out before it launches, rather than probably out before it launches. So that's probably made someone a lot more relaxed.
Valve already have Kernel developers in house + they sponsor Collabra to help with kernel development + they are customers of AMD which also has kenrel developers. So Valve is perfectly capable of applying their own patches where some of them are slated for 5.16 to go upstream, if 5.16 wasn't released before the release of SteamDeck. Even when 5.16 releases, they might add additional patches them selves anyway, because I understand that the first futex2 patch which is slated for 5.16 does not do everything Valve and Collabra wanted to do. And the Kerel community asked them to submit smaller patches and get them accepted individually.
Looking forward to these patches hitting upstream anyways. Maybe I will try to wrestle my self away from kernel 5.4 on my gaming computer, or I could just add the futex2 patch my self to 5.4, but I want to stop having to add patches I want to the kernel and use a binary update instead of updating compiling source. Its just I also use some patches to the Nvidia driver which requires an older nvidia driver which requires an older kenrel. shrugs
Quoting: LiamMcBrideIt wouldn't surprise me if the chip shortage is to blame for it being delayed, I'm guessing it's going to be about as difficult to find as graphics cards are right now because of that
It is the sole purpose of it. They mention it on the email sent to people that pre-ordered it. The shortage is affecting other big companies too, e.g; Nintendo recently reduced their expectations to create/sale hardware on 2022 by 20%.
The irony in this story, is that the IT industry spends trillions of $/£/€ in resiliency, high availability, failover… you name it. Yet we rely on TSMC, as a single point of failure, for over 50% of chip manufacture.
Last edited by Arehandoro on 11 November 2021 at 11:27 am UTC
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