Our friends down under will finally be able to buy an officially supported Steam Deck, as it heads to Australia officially in November. It's been a long road to get there, but it's finally happening which opens up Australia to other Valve hardware now too.
The Steam Deck LCD was originally released back in February 2022 and was later expanded with Valve's Komodo partnership to also be sold in Japan, Hong Kong, South Korea and Taiwan. Much later in November 2023, Valve then revealed the much better Steam Deck OLED.
From the press email the prices will be (inclusive of GST):
- 256GB LCD: $649.00 AUD
- 512GB OLED: $899.00 AUD
- 1TB OLED: $1049.00 AUD
Not bad pricing, and with the OLED truly being a much better device you really should grab that model if you can afford it. It's truly the definitive Steam Deck.
It's only going to get better too with the upcoming release of SteamOS 3.6.
Once Valve are eventually ready to talk more about a potential Steam Deck 2, this should also hopefully mean Australia won't be left out in the cold on release day. Although, it's also another signal that the current Steam Deck model is here to stay for some time yet.
You can follow along for more using our Steam Deck Tag (with a dedicated RSS feed), our Steam Deck Forum Category and the Steam Deck Channel in Discord.
See more on the Steam Deck website.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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I'm still curious what took them so long.
It's not chip restrictions, it's not copyright law, it probably isn't wiretapping law and it isn't the market.
Does Australia have some product safety law it failed to meet, such as "all gaming consoles should have minimally EAL5 rated hardware."
Could it be Chinese import/export restrictions.
The closest I get is that it's according to the american government a "small competitive market", but that applies to a lot of their already released countries.
Last edited by LoudTechie on 11 October 2024 at 8:45 am UTC
It's not chip restrictions, it's not copyright law, it probably isn't wiretapping law and it isn't the market.
Does Australia have some product safety law it failed to meet, such as "all gaming consoles should have minimally EAL5 rated hardware."
Could it be Chinese import/export restrictions.
The closest I get is that it's according to the american government a "small competitive market", but that applies to a lot of their already released countries.
Last edited by LoudTechie on 11 October 2024 at 8:45 am UTC
3 Likes, Who?
I'm still curious what took them so long.
It's not chip restrictions, it's not copyright law, it probably isn't wiretapping law and it isn't the market.
Does Australia have some product safety law it failed to meet, such as "all gaming consoles should have minimally EAL5 rated hardware."
Could it be Chinese import/export restrictions.
The closest I get is that it's according to the american government a "small competitive market", but that applies to a lot of their already released countries.
I would speculate, the engineering challenges incurred when playing the Steam Deck upside down.
29 Likes, Who?
I would speculate, the engineering challenges incurred when playing the Steam Deck upside down.The reverse gravity interferes with the electron flow, so they had to invert the chip design to be compatible with the southern hemisphere.
9 Likes, Who?
Given the Switch 2 being around the corner, I expect a Steam Deck 2 release at least a year after that. The release in Australia strengthens this suspicion, because announcing a new Steam Deck right after finally releasing the old one would not have the best reception.
But now that Valve expands delivery to a new country, it makes me wonder if they already made preparations to sell in other less mentioned areas or if they do it slowly one by one.
But now that Valve expands delivery to a new country, it makes me wonder if they already made preparations to sell in other less mentioned areas or if they do it slowly one by one.
1 Likes, Who?
I'm still curious what took them so long.Spider proofing.
Localisation:
It was missing a "tries to kill you feature."
8 Likes, Who?
pleasereadthemanual Oct 11
Darn. Now I can't comment anything in the Steam Deck posts anymore.
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StoneColdSpider Oct 11
Hey im not that bad!I'm still curious what took them so long.Spider proofing.
11 Likes, Who?
TheRiddick Oct 11
Has anyone connected a steam deck to a quest-3? Should be doable, that be neat for some laid back nighttime gaming.
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Darn. Now I can't comment anything in the Steam Deck posts anymore.Until November you still can and it's still not a truly global release.
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Do we know if they're partnering with someone, or doing it themselves?
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Do we know if they're partnering with someone, or doing it themselves?
Probably not.
I honestly don't know, which dorpbear Valve had to kill, but since their release misses any reference to their future partners and such releases are prime real estate for partnership announcements I feel safe to assume that they're not partnering with anybody except Australian quality control.
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I'm still curious what took them so long.Lord Gaben is being wary of emus. I cannot blame him.
8 Likes, Who?
I don't have a Steam deck myself as I'm not a fan of portable gaming at all (Don't even play games on my Pixel phone) and don't want to play games unless its on my PC, but I'm glad for my nephew who hasn't been able to get one down there yet.
Last edited by Leahi84 on 11 October 2024 at 12:15 pm UTC
Last edited by Leahi84 on 11 October 2024 at 12:15 pm UTC
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That suggests to me that they did want to partner with someone like they've done for the Asian countries it's been released in (they said that Japan and Australia were "furthest along" when asked about other countries during the conference around the launch), but it fell through and they've taken it on themselves - hence the delay. You're right that if they were partnering with someone they'd probably have said so in the announcement so that they were treating that partner well.Do we know if they're partnering with someone, or doing it themselves?
Probably not.
I honestly don't know, which dorpbear Valve had to kill, but since their release misses any reference to their future partners and such releases are prime real estate for partnership announcements I feel safe to assume that they're not partnering with anybody except Australian quality control.
1 Likes, Who?
I don't have a Steam deck myself as I'm not a fan of portable gaming at all (Don't even play games on my Pixel phone) and don't want to play games unless its on my PC, but I'm glad for my nephew who hasn't been able to get one down there yet.Most of my usage has been on the sofa or in bed - you don't have to take it outside for it to be useful.
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Another nice feature is that you can hook it up to the TV using any dock (including Valve's own) or USB-C attachment without worrying about some weird proprietary connector like the Switch.I don't have a Steam deck myself as I'm not a fan of portable gaming at all (Don't even play games on my Pixel phone) and don't want to play games unless its on my PC, but I'm glad for my nephew who hasn't been able to get one down there yet.Most of my usage has been on the sofa or in bed - you don't have to take it outside for it to be useful.
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CyborgZeta Oct 11
Now Bruce can enjoy his Vegemite sandwich and Tim-Tams in the Outback while still being able to play his favorite PC games.
1 Likes, Who?
I don't have a Steam deck myself as I'm not a fan of portable gaming at all (Don't even play games on my Pixel phone) and don't want to play games unless its on my PC, but I'm glad for my nephew who hasn't been able to get one down there yet.
I wouldn't even ponder the idea of playing with my phone. But having a small Linux PC to play on the sofa or in the bed on the other hand...
Last edited by Eike on 11 October 2024 at 4:25 pm UTC
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I don't have a Steam deck myself as I'm not a fan of portable gaming at all (Don't even play games on my Pixel phone) and don't want to play games unless its on my PC, but I'm glad for my nephew who hasn't been able to get one down there yet.
I wouldn't even ponder the idea of playing with my phone. But having a small Linux PC to play on the sofa or in the bed on the other hand...
I guess in addition I prefer the high end graphics and resolution my PC and 1440 monitor gives me, so it's just not interesting to me to play that stuff in a smaller screen with graphics turned down. To each their own.
Last edited by Leahi84 on 11 October 2024 at 5:49 pm UTC
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