Based on the numbers at https://steamframeout.com/ you can do some very rough back of the envolope calculations and it's not looking great.

In recent days, purchases and deliveries seem to move to a pretty consistent 150/day pace. At this rate, moving through the queue of roughly 37.000 reservations will take around 240 days.

Being more generous you could substract the already shipped Frames and assume a more optimistic 160 deliveries per day. This shortens the timespan to just 200 days for the outstanding backlog.

So yeah, the last reservations would be delivered around April 2027.

I am fully aware of all the caveats of the numbers used, this is just a fun little exercise based on available data.

There was an announcement yesterday or the day before that if you go to the store page for the frame and you are signed in and had a reservation it'll show an estimate of how long you might have to wait now.

They did also recently update the Steam store page for the Frame to include a go/no-go of order availability for either by December 2027 2026 or 2027, if you view the page while logged in and have one reserved

We will email you if a unit becomes available

I'm guessing I shouldn't hold my breath?

I thought the distinction between the reservation list and waitlist was that the reserved ones were ready to go basically immediately. They were moving through the reserved list pretty fast initially too. Guess not.

I get that AI companies sucking up all the hardware has slowed things down elsewhere, but this legitimately just feels like a major fuckup on Valve's part. Honestly ridiculous. It feels like they dramatically underestimated the demand for all 3 of these hardware releases this year.

I'm legitimately considering just getting one from a scalper at this point. I know that's a practice that shouldn't be supported at all and is a huge part of the problem, but pushing back to December at the earliest is ridiculous.

December 2026*

Whoops fixed thanks!

That announcement was what made me do the calculations.

I saw that and did my little calculation, which I think fits quite well.

Being on the waitlist myself I slowly accepting the fact that it's a "wait and see if we even produce a Frame for you" list. At this rate other manufacturers might offer competitive alternatives before I could even order one.

The saddest thing is that I would've been willing to spend up to 1.800,- if only I could.

I'm just waiting and I'm waitlisted. I went years without VR. I want a frame but not enough to buy from a scalper.

It seems the reservation list means "we have allocated a unit to you that is scheduled for production sometime in the near future" and waitlist means "uhhhh well you'll get one when we get around to it".

Valve kinda shit the bed with all the hardware this year. I was hyped for all three when first announced, and started a savings fund for all three.

Every new detail that came out killed that excitement a little bit and each launch I decided to pass ultimately. I know this won't be popular, but decided to pick up a NS2 with the savings instead.

Hopefully they are still making the controllers in two years and I'll pick up a couple on sale.

I’m just skipping this generation of hardware. If they don’t care enough to do market research on demand, then I don’t care enough to buy.

The Steam Deck back then

It was also like this with the Steam Deck and there the production ramped up a lot compared to the initial supply.

Here you go!

https://www.ebay.com/itm/287641715310

(Not my auction. I'm just sayin'... If you got money to burn...)

... but not to profit a scalper!

Which is honestly a pretty smart way to handle things, even if it feels frustrating. Valve doesn't want to create a larger supply than there is demand for, because they stand to lose a lot of money. If they limit the initial supply they can get an idea of the rate at which people who joined the waitlist (a low effort, zero cost ask) are actually placing an order vs deciding not to. Once they have good data on that rate, they can ramp up production to meet the actual demand.

So yeah, the last reservations would be delivered around April 2027.

So maybe someone will have hacked the Quest 3 by then to install SteamOS.

I'm in a discord where they announced almost the day of frame shipping that they jailbroke recent firmware. I will attempt soon and the to remember to report back 🥲