Last year, Valve's upcoming handheld gaming PC Steam Deck suffered an unfortunate delay after much fanfare, pushing back the handheld's launch from its December 2021 window to February 2022. Today, Valve revealed a firm launch date for the device for the first time; it will now be arriving on February 25.
When the highly anticipated day is reached, Valve will be sending out order emails for the first batch of $5 reservation holders. Those who get the offer will have 72 hours to confirm the order and make the purchase. If the timer expires, that reservation will be passed on to the next person in the queue, making sure a slot isn't wasted.
The emails will start going out shortly after 10 a.m. PST on February 25, and only the model that was originally reserved will be offered for purchase.
Valve plans to have the first wave of Steam Decks ship out on February 28, with more reservation order emails going out weekly afterward. It's unclear how big these batches of Steam Deck shipments are going to be. Putting in a new reservation at the time of writing offers an expected availability of "After Q2 2022".
The company has also been busy improving support for the Steam Deck's game library, introducing a verification system to determine how well a game will run on the handheld, drastically reducing the size of the SteamOS image on the device, and even updating Half-Life 2 to offer a better controller interface.
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