Nintendo Switch’s Steam Deck gaming rival sold out? Maybe not. What you need to know about reservations

Valve was surprised to unveil its new Steam bridge Thursday. The portable device, which looks like the Nintendo Switch ($ 299 at Amazon), plays PC games and acts as a stand-alone computer. The company provided basic details on its new system, saying it would be available in December.

The Steam Deck is Valve’s entry into the portable gaming device market. It looks like a Switch but with a 7-inch touchscreen, 16GB of RAM and powered by a custom Zen 2 processor and RDNA 2 graphics, which is enough to run most AAA games. Reservations for the device went live on Friday, but they went quickly.

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Here’s what you need to know about booking a Steam Deck.

When can I book a Steam Deck?

Reservations began at 10 a.m. PT (1 p.m. ET) on Friday on the Steam Deck Booking Page. Steam’s servers have been destroyed, frankly, by the sheer number of people trying to get their hands on a Steam Deck. The reservation page has since grayed out the options for reserving the new portable gaming PC.

Valve did not respond to a request for confirmation indicating whether reservations were sold out.

How do Steam Deck reservations work?

A $ 5 fee is required to make a reservation for a Steam Deck, depending on the booking page. When a reservation is submitted, it is queued. This $ 5 will then go towards the price of the Steam Deck.

On the updated Steam Deck booking page, orders for the 64GB and 256GB versions are listed to be available in Q1 2022, while 512GB is listed as Q2 2022. This means the first lot scheduled for release in December has already been booked and the rest will come in the months that follow.

Who can make a Steam Deck reservation?

Valve has set certain requirements for reservations. First of all, you will need a Steam account. It is 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 before June. Valve says this will help ensure a fair ordering process.

Those who did not make a purchase before June should have waited until Sunday July 18 to book. It seems a moot point now.

When will the Steam Deck be released in the United States?

This December.

What notable differences are there between the different Steam Deck models?

There are three different Steam Decks currently being released. The starter unit costs $ 399 and comes with 64GB of storage. For $ 529, the storage jumps to 256GB and uses an NVMe SSD, which Valve says is faster than the cheaper model’s eMMC storage. The third Steam Deck is priced at $ 649. It has 512 GB of NVMe SSD storage with the fastest read and write speed, and it will have an anti-glare engraved display. All three will have a microSD slot for more storage.