It's been announced that the Steam Deck will start shipping out to parts of Asia, namely Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan this month, something many living in these nations will have been looking forward to. Despite Valve having a shaky history with hardware projects, the Deck is proving its worth in the PC gaming community, noted for its ability to handle plenty of games as well as its versatility and modding capabilities. The portable machine has already proven popular in the West since it launched earlier this year.The Steam Deck continues to have games verified for it, including the remastered Spider-Man, Miles Morales, and Elden Ring, and fans have been praising the device since day one. It makes sense that so many titles would be playable on it, as gaming is the system's raison d'être, even though it can do other things as well. Given this popularity, it's not surprising that other nations would be interested in getting hold of it themselves, and those in some Asian countries will be able to get theirs soon. In a recent post on the official Steam Deck Twitter page, the company says it's ready to ship the device out to Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, with the first batch going out on December 17. Anyone who pre-ordered will receive an email beginning on December 1 asking them to finalize the purchase. Those interested in making a purchase in the aforementioned countries can place an order on the Komodo website, which is the official distributor of the Valve machine in these nations. On top of that, customers can also purchase the official docking station.
Since releasing in February, Valve has said that it's interested in making the Steam Deck available in other countries before the end of 2022, and it looks as though the company is well on its way to fulfilling that promise. Of course, given that shipping won't begin until the middle of December, it's entirely possible many won't be able to receive their Deck until after Christmas, so anyone looking to get one in time for the holiday season may have to wait a little while longer.
Despite being out for less than a year, the Steam Deck already has some competition. The OneXPlayer 2 could easily be a rival to the Steam device, and no doubt there will be many more tech companies out there that will be interested in cutting off a slice of that mobile PC gaming pie.