After its December 2021 release was pushed back because of supply chain issues, Valve’s exciting new Steam Deck handheld PC has been released, but only to a few people, with a lot of orders not available until “after Q2 2022”.

“The shortages are not due to supply shock, they’re due to a demand shock,” says Valve president Gabe Newell. “It’s just this huge uptake in silicon consumption that caught everybody more or less flat-footed.”

So it’s a case of first-come, first served, with Valve contacting consumers who pre-ordered early. Those customers have three days after receiving their email to complete the purchase or lose their spot in the demand line-up.

The base version of the Steam Deck, at $55.62, comes with 64GB flash storage. The top version, with 512GB of faster internal storage, rolls out at $903.76.

All tiers haves access to the Steam library of 62,000 games.

“Our goal was to bring all the games on Steam to a handheld form factor, to be able to play even the triple A games in the library,” says Greg Coomer, a Valve designer.