So I was wondering these days about the situation of the Steam Deck OLED version in Japan since it was also available for a few weeks too locally through the KOMODO partnership. And lo’ and behold, when checking the site today I found out that the OLED version is completely out of stock in Japan!

You can see it for yourself on the official site of Komodo, while this page is subject to change.

This can mean two different things:

• The demand was very strong and exceeded the supply they had planned
• The amount of OLED versions they had secured for Japan was very limited

And of course, a potential combination of both factors. I am not sure which one is the most likely. Since Valve had to do a worldwide launch of the Steam Deck OLED my guess is that they have decided to put more priority on where the market was the strongest so far, which is probably the US and Europe - and potentially deprioritized Japan in terms of units availability.

The Steam Deck in Edion Osaka: The Present Situation

Today I also went for a quick journey to the Edion store in Osaka. So, what games are being promoted front and center at Edion? It’s yet another Switch game, Super Mario Bros Wonder. Back in May it was the latest Zelda.

Earlier this year, this store is where you could find the Steam Deck sold in stores for the first time in Japan, with a fairly big presence for a few weeks. We covered that event at length at the time. Here is a short video of the launch event at the time, as a reminder:

Today, the situation is quite different. The Steam Deck has been relegated to a fairly small display on the 2nd floor (the PC/Mac floor, not the gaming floor!), with only one unit available for testing, hardly visible. And worse, it’s not even presented on its own, but it’s sharing the space with the ROG Ally!

Additionally, the news of the Steam Deck OLED have not seemingly reached the store - you would not know about its existence if you visited right now, as an unaware client. I asked one store clerk on that floor about it, and they knew that there was a new version out, but the Edion Osaka store had no such units for sale, and no plans to acquire them for now (at least, no fixed date). By probing a little further, the gentleman told me that he thinks the Kantou region (the region of Tokyo) is probably the first place where you will find the Steam Deck OLED in stores. He also assumes that the quantities may be somewhat limited.

I have to say, I was a little dissapointed by this situation. It feels like either Edion or Komodo have dropped the ball with the in-store campaign… at least in Osaka. Let’s hope the situation in Tokyo is brighter.