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unfortunately it still seems to be impossible to buy a steam deck at a normal price, they're on ebay from scalpers... I've no idea what the real world waiting

unfortunately it still seems to be impossible to buy a steam deck at a normal price, they're on ebay from scalpers... I've no idea what the real world waiting list time is right now.

stuart78 4y ago
So far they are meeting or beating the expectations set for pre-order customers. My own order was targeted at Q3 (July - Oct) and I got my order completion link on 6/30. Currently they list only "After Q3", so def hard to know what that means, but it does seem that they are catching up.
- seba_dos1 4y ago
  It likely means that they expect to clear the queue and have some in stock sometime after Q3.
vehemenz 4y ago
After owning a Steam Deck for several months, I think it's worth paying ebay prices. They are pretty reasonable if you're used to the scalped GPU/console market. That's just my opinion though.
toasteros 4y ago
If you put a reservation in today, there's a solid chance you'll get it at a normal price in October. It's $5 for the reservation. Just put one in and be patient. If anything, I would probably say it's better to wait and get a Deck later than sooner, because it is improving on the software side incredibly rapidly. The day one experience you have with your Deck in October will be a lot better than what I had last month.
- trashcan 4y ago
  I pre-ordered in January and my date shows: > After Q3 (October 2022 or later) I know they have ramped up production but I would be surprised if an order made today comes in October. But waiting is still better than supporting scalpers.
  - smabie 4y ago
    What's wrong with scalpers? They offer a valuable service: allowing people who want something to be able to pay for it.
    - kazinator 4y ago
      Scalpers interfere with the original vendor keeping things affordable. E.g. concert tickets: the same number of seats are filled with or without scalpers, but scalpers just ensure that the tickets are more pricy and the concertgoers are richer people. They are just third parties not affiliated with the venue or the artist who help themselves to some cash, by eroding a margin of affordability that was implicit in the original pricing. If scalpers took food from a food bank and sold it at close to retail prices, would you still say they are doing a service?
      - Vecr 4y ago
        The solution to scalpers is for the original seller to increase the price of the item to the point where the number of scalped items being sold goes down, but the total sales also don't go down too much. Re-adjust as supply and demand change, of course. I think lots of people who don't understand economics would become upset if you did that in many cases, though. Probably would not work for tickets to an event, because you don't have enough time to adjust. Would probably work for Steam Decks and graphics cards though.
        kazinator 4y ago
        > The solution to scalpers is for the original seller to increase the price of the item Maybe they are getting enough value from their customers as it is, and don't want to be dicks.
        potatoz2 4y ago
        You need a way to deal with the scarcity. Pricing is the default way to do that. If you want to avoid pricing, you need to think through what alternative you’ll use, otherwise pricing happens anyway.
- sixothree 4y ago
  Of course that will be for an item that is almost a year old. So at this point, my advice is to consider waiting. edit: additionally, this site will tell you how close they are to getting to you https://getmydeck.ingenhaag.dev/ https://getmydeck.ingenhaag.dev/
  - dagurp 4y ago
    I ordered in August 2021 and that site tells me 23 days until it's my turn. Yet the steam site says after Q3
    - yepguy 4y ago
      I think you misunderstood the site (which is understandable, because it's pretty confusing). It's not estimating when you'll get your order. It's telling you that the people at the front of queue placed their order 23 days before you.
      - dagurp 4y ago
        Ah, thanks :)
striking 4y ago
The waiting list is starting to subside afaict. It'll still be some time (they say "October or later" for current reservations) but picking one up from a scalper is probably not worth the monetary and moral cost.
flatiron 4y ago
I’m a big “v2” person. Usually if a product gets a v2 it’s going to be supported for a bit and all of the returned consoles with a broken X have a much better X in V2. But that doesn’t help you if you want to play games now! My kids are still young so I think by the time v2 comes they will be game ready.
- adwf 4y ago
  Problem is that Valve have yet to ever go to V2 for their hardware unfortunately.
  - kbenson 4y ago
    Also not a bad reason to wait. If it's not important enough for them to iterate on to make better/cheaper because it's still selling, it might be better to skip for most people. Thankfully, I've only heard good things about the steam deck, so hopefully they'll fix whatever hardware/manufacturing problems they might find and make changes to make it better. Barring that, I hear it's popular enough that there will probably be third party "equivalent" hardware soon, and maybe they would see it as profitable enough to iterate and make better if valve for some reason doesn't.
tomc1985 4y ago
I put in a reservation last year and it just finally proc'd
ineedasername 4y ago
They just had some type.of announcement about doubling production runs, so that may help. Also, the low end model may be the easiest to get, and you really don't need more than that. I'm sure the better drives are faster, but speaking from my own experience with a 64GB unit w/ 512GB micro SD card, it works just fine. Load speeds are perfectly reasonable, as are downloads/installs.
grogenaut 4y ago
My reservation just popped, I was in the August -> September group until it popped. I bought maybe 6pm on the day it went on sale due to heir massive issues with card processing and so being locked out for 4 hours due to "fraud checks".

unfortunately it still seems to be impossible to buy a steam deck at a normal price, they're on ebay from scalpers... I've no idea what the real world waiting list time is right now.

stuart78 4y ago

So far they are meeting or beating the expectations set for pre-order customers. My own order was targeted at Q3 (July - Oct) and I got my order completion link on 6/30. Currently they list only "After Q3", so def hard to know what that means, but it does seem that they are catching up.

seba_dos1 4y ago
It likely means that they expect to clear the queue and have some in stock sometime after Q3.

vehemenz 4y ago

After owning a Steam Deck for several months, I think it's worth paying ebay prices. They are pretty reasonable if you're used to the scalped GPU/console market. That's just my opinion though.

toasteros 4y ago

If you put a reservation in today, there's a solid chance you'll get it at a normal price in October. It's $5 for the reservation. Just put one in and be patient. If anything, I would probably say it's better to wait and get a Deck later than sooner, because it is improving on the software side incredibly rapidly. The day one experience you have with your Deck in October will be a lot better than what I had last month.

trashcan 4y ago
I pre-ordered in January and my date shows: > After Q3 (October 2022 or later) I know they have ramped up production but I would be surprised if an order made today comes in October. But waiting is still better than supporting scalpers.
- smabie 4y ago
  What's wrong with scalpers? They offer a valuable service: allowing people who want something to be able to pay for it.
  - kazinator 4y ago
    Scalpers interfere with the original vendor keeping things affordable. E.g. concert tickets: the same number of seats are filled with or without scalpers, but scalpers just ensure that the tickets are more pricy and the concertgoers are richer people. They are just third parties not affiliated with the venue or the artist who help themselves to some cash, by eroding a margin of affordability that was implicit in the original pricing. If scalpers took food from a food bank and sold it at close to retail prices, would you still say they are doing a service?
    - Vecr 4y ago
      The solution to scalpers is for the original seller to increase the price of the item to the point where the number of scalped items being sold goes down, but the total sales also don't go down too much. Re-adjust as supply and demand change, of course. I think lots of people who don't understand economics would become upset if you did that in many cases, though. Probably would not work for tickets to an event, because you don't have enough time to adjust. Would probably work for Steam Decks and graphics cards though.
      - kazinator 4y ago
        > The solution to scalpers is for the original seller to increase the price of the item Maybe they are getting enough value from their customers as it is, and don't want to be dicks.
        potatoz2 4y ago
        You need a way to deal with the scarcity. Pricing is the default way to do that. If you want to avoid pricing, you need to think through what alternative you’ll use, otherwise pricing happens anyway.
sixothree 4y ago
Of course that will be for an item that is almost a year old. So at this point, my advice is to consider waiting. edit: additionally, this site will tell you how close they are to getting to you https://getmydeck.ingenhaag.dev/ https://getmydeck.ingenhaag.dev/
- dagurp 4y ago
  I ordered in August 2021 and that site tells me 23 days until it's my turn. Yet the steam site says after Q3
  - yepguy 4y ago
    I think you misunderstood the site (which is understandable, because it's pretty confusing). It's not estimating when you'll get your order. It's telling you that the people at the front of queue placed their order 23 days before you.
    - dagurp 4y ago
      Ah, thanks :)

striking 4y ago

The waiting list is starting to subside afaict. It'll still be some time (they say "October or later" for current reservations) but picking one up from a scalper is probably not worth the monetary and moral cost.

flatiron 4y ago

I’m a big “v2” person. Usually if a product gets a v2 it’s going to be supported for a bit and all of the returned consoles with a broken X have a much better X in V2. But that doesn’t help you if you want to play games now! My kids are still young so I think by the time v2 comes they will be game ready.

adwf 4y ago
Problem is that Valve have yet to ever go to V2 for their hardware unfortunately.
- kbenson 4y ago
  Also not a bad reason to wait. If it's not important enough for them to iterate on to make better/cheaper because it's still selling, it might be better to skip for most people. Thankfully, I've only heard good things about the steam deck, so hopefully they'll fix whatever hardware/manufacturing problems they might find and make changes to make it better. Barring that, I hear it's popular enough that there will probably be third party "equivalent" hardware soon, and maybe they would see it as profitable enough to iterate and make better if valve for some reason doesn't.

tomc1985 4y ago

I put in a reservation last year and it just finally proc'd

ineedasername 4y ago

They just had some type.of announcement about doubling production runs, so that may help. Also, the low end model may be the easiest to get, and you really don't need more than that. I'm sure the better drives are faster, but speaking from my own experience with a 64GB unit w/ 512GB micro SD card, it works just fine. Load speeds are perfectly reasonable, as are downloads/installs.

grogenaut 4y ago

My reservation just popped, I was in the August -> September group until it popped. I bought maybe 6pm on the day it went on sale due to heir massive issues with card processing and so being locked out for 4 hours due to "fraud checks".