I share your skepticism, because Valve is definitely in a damned if you do/don’t situation. But…

The only people who could justify an absurdly high price for a Steam Machine are the people who NEED a plug-and-play console-like system and can afford a high price. And that is just not a big market.

I’m not sure it was ever a large market. Like I don’t think based on Valve’s comments during the launch that they were thinking “bigger than the Steam Deck”. It really felt like “for the subset of Deck users who want this too, and maybe it’ll surprise us.” The commentary around price has ALWAYS been “it’s going to be too expensive”, from the second it was announced, so it’s hard to know how much the price will actually impact sales, because so many people want to talk about how they’d buy a thing if not for this one factor who were never ever going to buy the thing.

The pricing is definitely going to be a problem now, there is no way around that. But because I’m the person you are describing, I will say… I’m just over building PCs and the inherent compromises (nevermind that the component prices are crushing that market too). The guy who did the video a few months back was a) in Canada, b) buying shit in parking lots from FB marketplace, c) doing this 6 months ago, before the war. I’m not convinced it could be done reasonably today at some remarkably lower price than whatever you think the Steam Machine will cost.

I don’t want the ecosystem lock-in of consoles, I already own tons of PC games. I want exactly what Valve is cooking, and not really anything else. Even if it’s an alleged better value.