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.
On one hand, maybe. On the other tho, a lot of parents are gamers themselves with big steam libraries. That can be really good argument for steam machine, and also Valve has brand loyalty on par with Sony or Microsoft, just not in consoles (yet).
I’d be (pleasantly) shocked if Valve made significant inroads with lifelong console gamers. Fortunately, we benefit from having an open console-like experience from them either way.