Steam Deck gaming rival to Nintendo Switch sold out? Maybe not. What to know about reservations - CNET

Want to get your hands on a Steam Deck?

Valve

Valve made the surprise reveal of its new Steam Deck on Thursday. The portable device, which looks similar to the Nintendo Switch ($299 at Amazon), plays PC games and acts as a standalone computer. The company offered up basic details on its new system, saying it'll be available in December. 

The Steam Deck is Valve's entry into the portable gaming device market. It looks similar to a Switch but with a 7-inch touchscreen, 16GB of RAM, and powered by a custom Zen 2 CPU and RDNA 2 graphics, which is enough power to run most AAA games. Reservations for the device went live Friday and brought down Valve's site. 

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Here's what you need to know about reserving a Steam Deck.

When can I reserve a Steam Deck? 

Reservations started Friday at 10 a.m. PT (1 p.m. ET) on the Steam Deck reservation page. Steam's servers were wrecked, frankly, by the vast number of people trying to get their hands on a Steam Deck. The reservation page grayed out the options, but the reserve buttons have returned. 

The updated Steam Deck reservation page with new dates. 

Valve

Valve didn't respond to a request for confirmation on whether reservations were sold out. 

How do Steam Deck reservations work? 

A $5 fee is required to place a reservation for a Steam Deck, according to the reservation page. When a reservation is submitted, it's put in a queue. That $5 will then go toward the price of the Steam Deck. 

On the updated Steam Deck reservation page, orders for the 64GB and 256GB versions are listed to be available in Q2 2022, while the 512GB is listed as Q3 2022. This means the first batch set to release in December is already accounted for and the rest will come in the following months. 

Who can make a Steam Deck reservation? 

Valve set out some requirements for reservations. First off, you'll need a Steam account. It's free to create one and will be required to use the Steam Deck. Second, to reserve a unit on Friday, your Steam account must have been used to make a purchase prior to this June. Valve says this will help assure a fair ordering process. 

Those who haven't made a purchase prior to June would have had to wait until Sunday, July 18, to make a reservation. That seems a moot point now. 

When will the Steam Deck release in the US? 

This December. 

What notable differences are there between different Steam Deck models? 

There are three different Steam Decks being released. The starter unit is $399 and comes with 64GB of storage. For $529, the storage increases to 256GB and uses an NVMe SSD, which Valve says is faster than the eMMC storage of the cheaper model. The third Steam Deck has a price tag of $649. It has 512GB of NVMe SSD storage with the fastest read and write speed, and it will have an antiglare etched screen. All three will have a microSD slot for more storage.

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