32
votes
Steam Deck shipping to Australia this November
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- Title
- Steam Deck on X (formerly Twitter): "We are excited to announce that Steam Deck is coming to Australia in November, 2024! The team is in Melbourne at PAX AUS, so stop by our booth if you're in town to try out Steam Deck! pic.twitter.com/2hfygzJNiN / X"
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- Steam Deck
Jesus, I'd always heard Oz got the shit end of the stick when it comes to games, but I didn't know they got delayed that badly. When's the fuckin' Colecovision coming out there, mates?
This is an especially bad delay, but on the other hand to my knowledge I don't think the Index ever released locally.
We're just not an especially big market, so I think it's an easy one to ignore if you're a company that isn't that confident manufacturing hardware at high scale.
I will say it was much worse back in the days of only physical media, when it wasn't unusual to have to wait for the PAL release of games (with additional languages) and then to have them even further delayed. The existence of digital distribution forces them to a more reasonable schedule if they want to bother with selling any physical games at all.
I don't think it's been an issue of market size, as Valve has publicly taken issue with Australia's consumer protection laws in the past. Either way, I've been waiting for it since 2021 so I'm glad it's happening at all.
Is there a source for this? For as long as I remember people online have speculated about this but as far as I'm aware there are no instances of Valve actually admitting to it.
As an Australian, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was somewhat true, but I also don’t think it’s coming from a place of pettiness or malice. I expect we’re just kinda not worth dealing with.
As wealthy as Valve is, they’re also an incredibly small company for their value. Australia has some of the strongest consumer protections in the world, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they just decided it’s not worth all the headache of making sure they’re fully compliant, and therefore just don’t sell to this market.
Played one at PAX AUS for the 15 min demo you get, I will be instantly purchasing once it's live. Can't wait.
The grey import prices were a bit too much, so I've been making so with a Razer Kishi and phone, just steam linking to phone. It's good, but small screen / wrong aspect ratio means black bars.
I will be traveling for work again soon which makes it even more appealing.
f i n a l l y
Took em long enough lol