Steam Deck will continue to experience supply chain difficulties even after its release

In an interview with GamesRadar+, Valve UX designer Lawrence Yang noted that the team is finding it difficult to keep up with the demand for portable PCs.

"This isn't the first time we've released hardware. It's not the first time we've released software. steamOS is also something we've been working on," Young said, "but putting them into a whole, and making enough of them, to be proven is obviously difficult."

Steam Deck has launched and will soon be in the hands of those lucky enough to snag a pre-order. But that doesn't mean that Valve's work to ensure the team can deliver the device to everyone who needs it is over. There are still a lot of software tweaks, playtesting and other updates that need to be done, and that means additional delays.

"The main thing we're going to do after we ship is make as many of these as we can," said Valve designer Greg Coomer, "because the demand is definitely far beyond our ability to supply Steam Deck on day one. And that's going to continue for a while. At least for a while after we ship, a lot of our attention is going to be turned in that direction."

Steam Deck is already experiencing delays in late 2021. valve initially sent an update in November to customers who had paid upfront informing them of the new February 2022 shipping window, which marked a two-month delay from the original December 2021 window.

Valve noted that it made every effort to resolve "global supply chain issues" at the time, but "due to material shortages, components could not arrive at our manufacturing facilities in time to meet our initial release date.