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.
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
Quoting: ToddLwithout worrying about some weird proprietary connector like the Switch
The Switch has a USB Typc-C connection... Nothing proprietary.
Quoting: PoliticsOfStarvingWe 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
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