Valve More Than Doubles Steam Deck Production, Q3 Reservations Starting Soon

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But the expected availability date hasn't changed yet.

Steam Deck
(Image credit: Valve)

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.

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.

Aaron Klotz
Aaron Klotz
Contributing Writer

Aaron Klotz is a contributing writer for Tom’s Hardware, covering news related to computer hardware such as CPUs, and graphics cards.

11 Comments Comment from the forums
  • -Fran-
    The really need to make a Revision B with a bigger battery. It's absolutely abysmal xP

    Other than that, it's an amazing machine. I'm so darn impressed I can't even express it in humanly understandable words; only happy moans and weird noises. Heh.

    Regards.
    Reply
  • Makaveli
    -Fran- said:
    The really need to make a Revision B with a bigger battery. It's absolutely abysmal xP

    Other than that, it's an amazing machine. I'm so darn impressed I can't even express it in humanly understandable words; only happy moans and weird noises. Heh.

    Regards.

    i'm waiting for a 2nd gen unit and better battery life before I bite.

    Hopefully something with a Zen4 apu and RDNA3
    Reply
  • _dawn_chorus_
    -Fran- said:
    The really need to make a Revision B with a bigger battery. It's absolutely abysmal xP

    Other than that, it's an amazing machine. I'm so darn impressed I can't even express it in humanly understandable words; only happy moans and weird noises. Heh.

    Regards.
    Abysmal is a bit strong... It more than doubles the playtime vs my 2019 Razer blade advanced which has an 80WHr battery. Playing a game like Hollow Knight or Eastward the Deck easily does 4-5 hours which I'd say is plenty fair considering the size. The same applies in AAA games except its like 45-60min on the Razer vs 90-120min on the Steam Deck. That's double the playtime with half the battery size.
    Reply
  • thisisaname
    More than double, kind of meaningless when they do not say how many are being produced a week.
    10 to 21 is more than double but still a tiny number.
    Reply
  • -Fran-
    Makaveli said:
    i'm waiting for a 2nd gen unit and better battery life before I bite.

    Hopefully something with a Zen4 apu and RDNA3
    The performance is surprisingly good for what it is. Plus it can use RSR and FSR with no problems. The interface needs a bit of polish, but that is Software side. Other than that, it's a really strong performer.

    _dawn_chorus_ said:
    Abysmal is a bit strong... It more than doubles the playtime vs my 2019 Razer blade advanced which has an 80WHr battery. Playing a game like Hollow Knight or Eastward the Deck easily does 4-5 hours which I'd say is plenty fair considering the size. The same applies in AAA games except its like 45-60min on the Razer vs 90-120min on the Steam Deck. That's double the playtime with half the battery size.
    It is abysmal, because it doesn't last a full round trip to anywhere without charging it. That's a problem. Remember this is not a laptop and it is meant to be used in a similar way to a Switch: on the go and untethered.

    EDIT: Let me just clarify that while I do strongly believe the battery is a very weak point of the Deck, I do consider it an amazing device nonetheless. I just want it to last longer when I play games that push the iGPU and power limit.

    Regards.
    Reply
  • TerryLaze
    -Fran- said:
    It is abysmal, because it doesn't last a full round trip to anywhere without charging it.
    Are you referring to AAA gaming time? Because if the 4-5 hours that chorus talks about are true then there is plenty of of round trips you could do with that.

    Also anything that takes a long time to travel has a way to provide you with power/charge your device, busses, planes, trains, everything short of public local transportation has charge ports.
    Reply
  • hushnecampus
    -Fran- said:
    The really need to make a Revision B with a bigger battery. It's absolutely abysmal xP

    Other than that, it's an amazing machine. I'm so darn impressed I can't even express it in humanly understandable words; only happy moans and weird noises. Heh.

    Regards.
    I’m not bothered about battery, I use it plugged in most of the time anyway, but I’d snap up a v2 with OLED. I’d also be super tempted by a Mini, with better ergonomics for small hands.

    In fact, if they were going to put a bigger battery in I’d rather keep the battery life the same and increase the power draw to run a larger screen (same footprint but smaller bezels, which would probably mean increasing the pixel count, meaning higher power draw for both the screen and the GPU).
    Reply
  • -Fran-
    TerryLaze said:
    Are you referring to AAA gaming time? Because if the 4-5 hours that chorus talks about are true then there is plenty of of round trips you could do with that.

    Also anything that takes a long time to travel has a way to provide you with power/charge your device, busses, planes, trains, everything short of public local transportation has charge ports.
    Bayoneta makes it last 2 hours. Any game that is midly intensive in 3D is going to drain the battery real quick. I've tried limiting frames and all that, but the games start stuttering like crazy; it's not a good experience. The only fix is a bigger battery or an outlet. That being said, the cable is not long enough to charge and play comfortably, so it's kind of funny. You'd need to buy an extra long cable.

    Regards.
    Reply
  • digitalgriffin
    Admin said:
    Valve says production of the Steam Deck has more than doubled per week, which should hopefully drive down reservation times for future owners.

    Valve More Than Doubles Steam Deck Production, Q3 Reservations Starting Soon : Read more

    Part of the appeal of the steamdeck was it allowed gaming in a time when GPU's were limited to the average gamer. Now there is a flood of GPUs coming in, along with a recession, I would think this would be a bad time to expand production. I have to admit $100 for 192GB storage upgrade is a bit insane. And 256GB really is really too small for any sizable library with a few games exceeding 100 Gigs these days.
    Reply
  • TerryLaze
    digitalgriffin said:
    Part of the appeal of the steamdeck was it allowed gaming in a time when GPU's were limited to the average gamer. Now there is a flood of GPUs coming in, along with a recession, I would think this would be a bad time to expand production. I have to admit $100 for 192GB storage upgrade is a bit insane. And 256GB really is really too small for any sizable library with a few games exceeding 100 Gigs these days.
    Nobody got a deck to compensate for a GPU, they might have spent the money for a GPU they couldn't get on a deck but not to replace a new GPU.
    Also they have a huge backlog of preorders and this increase in production might be for that alone and as soon as the pre orders are done they might go back to the lower production.

    Also I doubt that the deck is the single PC for anybody, they can play the huge games at home on their main system and take smaller games for on the go, like games that are pick up and play and not play for a minute and then wait for the 10min cut scene to be over.
    Reply