Steam Deck Launching in Asia on December 17th

Valve had its issues with the Steam Deck early on with production and shipping after taking tons of reservations and pre-orders, but they’ve addressed it accordingly and the number of units in circulation keeps growing. Perhaps one of their toughest challenges was penetrating the Asian market and dealing with regulatory compliance. Now, after almost a year-long battle, they’re set to begin shipping Steam Deck units to specific parts of Asia starting in just under two weeks on December 17th.

Those with pre-orders in the countries of Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan should already be receiving emails about their pre-orders. This began on December 1st. Assuming that the procedure is similar to that in the United States, users will simply need to either confirm their address, or make the necessary changes to update their shipping information before the shipping process begins.

The orders will be handled by Komodo, who will also be taking pre-orders for the eagerly anticipated Steam Deck dock. Although Valve doesn’t have direct access to all of Asia yet, these four countries represent a significant chunk of the Asian gaming market, outside of China of course, so it’s a good start to begin shipping units to these countries and monitoring the sales data, along with other data such as hours played, daily concurrent users and more.

Given the nature of the Asian gaming market, one can comfortably assume that the arrival of Valve’s stellar handheld console in that market is going to vastly improve its overall sales performance. Additionally, getting feedback from Asian users is arguably just as important, if not more important, than those elsewhere. Valve values community feedback and takes it very seriously in order to improve their current products, along with implementing specific new features into future products as well.

Meanwhile, the Steam Deck has been full “steam” ahead in the United States. Perhaps the best news recently was that in October, Valve announced that gamers no longer needed a reservation in order to purchase the console and could simply grab it at their own convenience. The anticipation of the Steam Deck and the lack of units forced Valve to take reservations and pre-orders in the early stages of the console’s existence, primarily due to COVID-19 related problems that influenced their ability to produce enough units and ship them out.

These hurdles have since been swept under the rug, though. The Steam Deck’s performance is top-notch, and Valve keeps adding features to it to improve it. The dock will also provide an opportunity to hook it up to an external display. Often times it’s hard to get it right the first time around in many industries, but the demand for the Steam Deck confirmed that Valve knew exactly what they were doing, and it is laying the foundation for what’s to come in the near future in terms of a follow-up console that’s likely to be even more high-tech and complex with better graphics.