You no longer need a reservation to buy a Steam Deck, according to Valve, the company behind the gaming handheld that launched earlier this year. Each model should be available to buy now, and at the time of writing, Valve’s estimating one- to two-week delivery on all of them (though there has been some wonkiness with the page like there was for the just-released dock for the console).
The company says that it’s worked through its queue of reservations and that the Deck is now in stock. It does warn that if there are enough orders, the estimated delivery times will get longer and that “at a certain point we’ll flip back into reservation mode until we’re able to catch up.” Valve also notes that it’s expanding the global availability of the console, opening up reservations in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. An email from Valve spokesperson Kaci Boyle noted that the company expects to ship those units out by the end of the year.
Whether Valve’s production will be enough to keep up with all of us who are addicted to instant gratification and who may be more tempted to pick one up now that there’s no need to wait for a reservation remains to be seen. But it’s pretty impressive that the company was able to deliver all its preorders ahead of schedule, even amid the chip shortages that have made consoles like the PS5 difficult to get until very recently.
If you’re trying to decide whether or not to buy a Steam Deck, I recommend reading my colleague Sean Hollister’s initial review and one-month follow-up. The software has gotten a lot of updates since then, but you’ll get a good idea about the hardware and the general experience.