In a fresh interview with IGN, Valve developer Lawrence Yang spoke about a number of things and it sounds like you may get your Steam Deck perhaps a little sooner than expected.
Right now, Valve use a special queue system giving reservations a rather broad time on when to expect a Steam Deck delivery like Q2 or after-Q2. The good news is though, production is quickly ramping up. Yang mentioned how "in production terms it'll ramp very quickly, in the first month very quickly we'll be in the tens of thousands, by the second month we'll be in the hundreds of thousands and beyond that it'll grow even quicker". Yang also mentioned how once they get into the after-Q2 launch period, things will get a lot clearer.
Full video is below:
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Sadly Valve will not give numbers yet but they do seem surprised at the level of sales on the Deck. Sounds like it has pretty clearly been a hit already, which is good news!
Yang also made it clear they are in touch with many developers to get them to support the Deck. That goes for both fixing bugs in Proton and helping developers to enable anti-cheat. Just yesterday we saw Apex Legends start working (my video), although no one has announced anything on it yet.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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13 comments
ElectricPrism Mar 2, 2022
All Aboard!!!! Were going to Tux Town Noot Noot
11 Likes, Who?
Two interesting things that Gabe mentioned in an interview were that a) the most expensive SKU was the most pre-ordered one (far more than the cheapest one), which might convince Valve to create more feature-rich models in the future, and b) the demand for the Deck was much more higher than they expected.
Min 6.48 and 9.04 in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zw54nB5BQpM
Min 6.48 and 9.04 in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zw54nB5BQpM
5 Likes, Who?
Two interesting things that Gabe mentioned in an interview were that a) the most expensive SKU was the most pre-ordered one (far more than the cheapest one), which might convince Valve to create more feature-rich models in the future, and b) the demand for the Deck was much more higher than they expected.Went over bullet points on that in a previous article ;)
Min 6.48 and 9.04 in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zw54nB5BQpM
4 Likes, Who?
^
Ah, my bad. Well, nevertheless, it was worth mentioning it again.
Ah, my bad. Well, nevertheless, it was worth mentioning it again.
5 Likes, Who?
Makes me wonder just how fast SteamOS3 will be #1 on the Linux category of the Steam Hardware Survey.
And how much the Linux % will rise over the years....
And how much the Linux % will rise over the years....
4 Likes, Who?
Philadelphus Mar 2, 2022
Hmm, let's math it out: so if March is "the first month", then "tens of thousands" is at least 20k. Then at least 200k for "hundreds of thousands" in April ("the second month"). "Beyond that it'll grow even quicker" but we don't have numbers, so assuming another (counterfactual) 200k for May and June, that's at bare minimum 620k units sold by the end of Q2, and probably a lot more. On the assumption that April is instead "the first month" (maybe they're still shaking the production line out in March), that's still 420k units (and again, probably a lot more).
Exciting times!
Exciting times!
3 Likes, Who?
Hmm, let's math it out: so if March is "the first month", then "tens of thousands" is at least 20k. Then at least 200k for "hundreds of thousands" in April ("the second month"). "Beyond that it'll grow even quicker" but we don't have numbers, so assuming another (counterfactual) 200k for May and June, that's at bare minimum 620k units sold by the end of Q2, and probably a lot more. On the assumption that April is instead "the first month" (maybe they're still shaking the production line out in March), that's still 420k units (and again, probably a lot more).That suggests that if March is the first month, by the beginning of May the Deck should be noticeably impacting the Linux numbers on Steam.
Exciting times!
3 Likes, Who?
TheRiddick Mar 2, 2022
Wonder if ANY of them are slated for Australia... probably not. I'll just keep playing with sand in meanwhile.
2 Likes, Who?
People have no doubt done this. But then, people have made lots of grammatical errors; doesn't make them correct. Technically, though, if you have less than a second thousand you do not have plural thousands, much the way if you have one thing you do not have "a thousand" things. Part of another thousand is not another thousand. A man holding another man's liver in his hand cannot be described as "men".Hmm, let's math it out: so if March is "the first month", then "tens of thousands" is at least 20k. Then at least 200k for "hundreds of thousands" in April ("the second month"). "Beyond that it'll grow even quicker" but we don't have numbers, so assuming another (counterfactual) 200k for May and June, that's at bare minimum 620k units sold by the end of Q2, and probably a lot more. On the assumption that April is instead "the first month" (maybe they're still shaking the production line out in March), that's still 420k units (and again, probably a lot more).11k can qualify as "tens of thousands", and 101k can also qualify as "hundreds of thousands". Wouldn't be the first time (at all) people used those numbers as such.
Exciting times!
Contrariwise, a release in February can accurately be described as a February release.
The guy sounded pretty confident, and seems to be a developer, not a PR person. I doubt he was pulling such a stunt.
1 Likes, Who?
If he had said, 'We'll be shipping tens of thousands,' or 'We'll have shipped tens of thousands,' then it would have to be twenty thousand or more he was talking about. However, he said, "We'll be in the tens of thousands." Technically, that only means at least ten thousand. When you go from 9,999 to 10,000 you leave the thousands and enter the tens of thousands, and when you go from 99,999 to 100,000 you leave the tens of thousands and enter the hundreds of thousands.
All that aside, I doubt they will go from only 10,000 the first month to over 100,000 the second month, which would be ten times the production. Most likely there will be several tens of thousands shipped the first month and well over one hundred thousand the second month. If they made 80,000 the first month and only tripled production the second month they would be at 240,000 for the second month (or 320,000 total). That seems a more realistic way to view the comment (though the numbers could be less and still work).
Last edited by CFWhitman on 4 March 2022 at 5:07 am UTC
All that aside, I doubt they will go from only 10,000 the first month to over 100,000 the second month, which would be ten times the production. Most likely there will be several tens of thousands shipped the first month and well over one hundred thousand the second month. If they made 80,000 the first month and only tripled production the second month they would be at 240,000 for the second month (or 320,000 total). That seems a more realistic way to view the comment (though the numbers could be less and still work).
Last edited by CFWhitman on 4 March 2022 at 5:07 am UTC
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As others have said, the minimum for "hundreds of thousands" is 100,000. So for 12 months it's 1.2 million, and for 5 years it's 6 million units, which is about 5% of what the Switch sold in the first 5 years, as a minimum. Not too bad in my opinion.
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Philadelphus Mar 4, 2022
To everyone claiming* that "Actually, 'tens of thousands' could mean 10k + 1!", I'd like to point out that "tens of thousands" could also technically mean 100k − 1 and "hundreds of thousands" could also mean 1M − 1, so if we run those numbers instead, we get 2,099,997 Steam Decks produced by the end of June. 
(And of course, that's not taking into account the "beyond that it'll grow even quicker" comment after the end of May.)
*Debatably; that's the level of pedantry I'd expect out of Microsoft lawyers fighting a billion-dollar anti-trust fine, and I don't agree that anyone using "tens of thousands" colloquially—as Yang is clearly doing here—would agree that it could be interpreted that way.
(And of course, that's not taking into account the "beyond that it'll grow even quicker" comment after the end of May.)
*Debatably; that's the level of pedantry I'd expect out of Microsoft lawyers fighting a billion-dollar anti-trust fine, and I don't agree that anyone using "tens of thousands" colloquially—as Yang is clearly doing here—would agree that it could be interpreted that way.
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