This is starting to feel like 20+ years ago having to wait for me deck, we are in the days now where in the UK we have Amazon who ship from warehouses in Spain and Germany and can deliver the same day they are sent out, Argos, sports direct and other store offer same day or next day delivery. And for this being a launch I’ve had items directly from Sony and Microsoft get delivered on launch days when I’ve ordered from them. I think the biggest mistake valve did was not opening pre orders for the OLED deck to find out the demand also only having one shipping option when they could of added paid shipping options and people could have paid for it themselves if they wanted to
Valve is not behind the times. They’re just much smaller than the companies you’re talking about. Sony and Microsoft are huge global corporations with massive logistical operations. Amazon, too, is a massive corporation where the entire basis of their business is moving things from point A to B, so of course they have warehouses and distribution centers all over the world and usually many such even within the same countries.
Imagine comparing a software store front company that decided to build some hardware to ship versus a company like Amazon, apple, Microsoft, or any of the other massive global brands.