Steam Deck officially comes to Australia in November

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.

I understand that and I do prefer the big one, too. I just found it convenient from time to time. (And it's far from the phone experience.)

To each their own.

Of course!


Last edited by Eike on 11 October 2024 at 6:32 pm UTC

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.

I have some pretty expensive Linux Gaming rigs 6900 XT, 7900 XT -- Threadripper and I gotta say that I play my Steam Deck OLED practically every day.

Lately I use my Steam Deck in conjunction with my Desktop - 4k @ 50" and 4k @ 75" and for me it makes Steam Controller v2 unnecessary because it literally is v2 with twin joysticks for like Halo MCC and other FPS.

I pre-ordered it out of obligation where mouth meets money, and since then I've probably ordered at least 7 or 8 mostly as gifts -- Valve and the Community have done an amazing job.

Liam is on point in the article the OLED 90hz version is lighter, easier to hold in odd positions and noticeably better.

But if the problem is that who has the extra budget these days, I totally get it, I just wanted to assure you that the grapes are not "sour" as in the "sour grapes" fable by aesop.

honeslty, im REALLy sad now.

Steam deck relased in 4 regions initially, then later on in more 4 regions...
i saw the countries were steam had the biggest revenue, and saw that Brasil should be in the next batch of 4 countries...

then, not only they dont relase here, but its just one region this time.

i dont know why i still create false hopes.

then, not only they dont relase here, but its just one region this time.

Doesn't Brazil have some sort of INSANE tax that Valve wouldn't be able to get around?

then, not only they dont relase here, but its just one region this time.

Doesn't Brazil have some sort of INSANE tax that Valve wouldn't be able to get around?

yes, games are treated as "bad luck games" (those that you bet real money), they are taxed in 60% wich is absurd... well nowadays some games are in fact bad luck games, but we shouldnt treat all of then like this.

in any case the tax are different for consoles than for games (they are much worse for the games thenselves and even then we had good prices in the past on steam, things changed but we still have massive sales)

regardless of tax, they earn a lot of money here, and maybe the steamdeck could enter the new taxes (if they dont change again with the new government) or enter here as pcs?

in any case, despite this problems i think it can sell well, steam is one of our savior for cheap games after all.


Last edited by elmapul on 12 October 2024 at 5:47 am UTC

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 didn’t see a proper response.. I might have missed it though. We have strong consumer protections here, and Valve doesn’t always see eye to eye with how our laws work. That’s been the prevailing theory.

I didn’t see a proper response.. I might have missed it though. We have strong consumer protections here, and Valve doesn’t always see eye to eye with how our laws work. That’s been the prevailing theory.

How about they could sell off as quick as they could produce without further expanding the market?

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 didn’t see a proper response.. I might have missed it though. We have strong consumer protections here, and Valve doesn’t always see eye to eye with how our laws work. That’s been the prevailing theory.

That was my assesment as well.
"Does Australia have some product safety law it failed to meet".
A problem with that one is that I a. couldn't find any consumer protection law that applies to the SteamDeck in Australia, that doesn't apply in the very first countries it released the thing, b. the same general logic is true for the entire European zone(they also all have national consumer protection laws you can still violate even if you obey the EU treaties).

Australia does have unique laws like "pay publishers if you want to copy their work", but I couldn't find one that applies to the SteamDeck(except for the Steam Store part, but the Steam Store is already in Australia).

Brazil as a market has a history with hardware...

"PS4K" did not become a trending topic out of the blue

people made the math and it was actually cheaper to fly to miami to buy the newly released PS4 than buy a new one here, if you knew a couple more folks who also wanted one

"PS4 runs" became a real thing

and that was after (heavy) import taxes got paid in the customs, not by dodging them

in short, the official explanation for this at the time was that Sony Brasil had to make a profit (atop the international price which included Sony's profit and taxes and whatnot)
... but only after Sony and Sony Brasil lied through their teeth saying "it's the taxes"... which was quickly debunked because we do have math classes in our schools

car prices go through a similar process

and stuff like the steam deck finds its way here through resellers (aka scalpers) from primary markets

which means we pay full USA/Europe pricetags + import costs from those countries + our taxes + scalper profit (and that's not even counting how weak R$ rates are against USD$ and EUR€)

yet we still buy it this way... so it's actually a great market to ignore, i guess? you get your normal profit without lifting a finger?

No mention of NZ in the announcement, I don't know if I should be celebrating or crying.

Whoever crafted the announcement couldn't have done a better job of trolling NZ if they had tried. We have been in the same boat as Australia for all this time, invariably mentioned together when the topic comes up and yet in this announcement not mentioned at all.

Intentional or just the business as usual omission?

If anyone can clarify the status of Steam Deck launching in NZ please let us know so we can start crying or cheering.


Last edited by Nod on 15 October 2024 at 5:23 am UTC

without worrying about some weird proprietary connector like the Switch

The Switch has a USB Typc-C connection... Nothing proprietary.

We have strong consumer protections here, and Valve doesn’t always see eye to eye with how our laws work. That’s been the prevailing theory.

Sometimes - for example, the Government is notoriously weak when it comes to companies banding together and fixing prices... Just look at what's happening with the supermarkets.

Also, every couple of years, the Government has a big whinge about major companies, such as Adobe and Microsoft, charging significantly more than overseas without justification, then after a big song and dance about how they're going to do something to stop this practice, they do absolutely nothing. Wait a few years, rinse and repeat with a different company.

In addition, we've had a number of multinational companies over the years that have been threatened with legal action when they've refused to comply with Consumer Legislation, only for the company to simply work around the legal action through a loophole or the Government to back down completely.

In short, they're tough on Consumer Legislation until somebody waves a big wad of cash in front of their face or simply stares them down.


Last edited by Cyba.Cowboy on 23 October 2024 at 11:00 pm UTC