I think that realistically, Valve probably only need to be on par with the top of Sony’s offering hardware wise. The ability to have Steam integration on the machine (including the large amount of subpar but very cheap games) will prompt at least some movement. I’d say $800 is probably the high-end of reasonable for price point. I can certain say I’d rather just buy my kids a StreamBox than have to deal with them want full capability PCs.

I agree. Steam's prices on sales are still mostly unmatched by consoles.

Even if it is a "pricier" PS5-like machine, I'd still buy it and I bet I'd make up the difference in less than a year with just the sales games (including older games I can't play on either console).

I think most of the critiques for this are from people expecting this to be aimed at PC gamers.

I don't think it is. I think it's aimed at people that actually DON'T want to bother with building, buying, upgrading PCs, but still want to play cheap games, older games.

To this day, I can't make my PC turn on with a controller (and I've tried). Making a PC wake up as fast as a Steam Deck from sleep? Impossible.

Those little things will all add up to make this a very nice option for the non-hardcode PC game crowd.

Valve is going to steal a lot of users from console, mostly Xbox. Not PC Gaming enthusiast.