I don’t quite understand the criticism. It’s not gonna be top of the line, but it’s more than enough to replace my dying laptop from 2015 that I pretty much only ever use like a desktop anyway. And I can save myself the time and effort of picking parts, building, and dealing with shit not working as expected.
I don’t think the Steam Machine is going to be placed in the market as a competitor for consoles. It’s probably not gonna be sold at a loss. The Steam Machine is a competitor to Windows. It’s Valve’s solution to show hardware makers and publishers that a PC gaming market without Microsoft is possible. At the moment Valve’s business is way too dependent on Microsoft. With the direction Win11 is going, Microsoft is a serious threat to Valve’s survival. The more anti-consumer Windows becomes the more likely it will push PC gamers to consoles.
Remember the first Steam Machines came out when Microsoft tried to force their Windows Store on developers in Win8.