Steam machines were a great idea that the market wasn’t quite ready for, and were too niche at the time. The steam deck has proved people of all technical levels are ready and willing to embrace a non-windows OS, and don’t care what it is as long as it can easily give them access to their content. I have an Nvidia shield, a PS5, a steam deck and a desktop PC. My game library is disjointed and I rarely play anything on the PC, because there is no good way to make it convenient. The vast majority of the time I use my steam deck, I’m sitting on my couch, just like my PS5 .

A steam console could unify everything, cut my devices while simplifying my experience and giving me way more control over the invasive bullshit that comes with streaming and android devices. That has so much upside and value to me, it’s hard to even put a price tag on it tbh.