I mean, Valve built this with the profits, at least, in no small part with the profits from selling games, DLC, and gacha skins on their storefront which has many many competitors too bozo-brained to run their stores as well as Valve does.

If any company has a business case for “we’ll sell the form factor at a loss with our store preinstalled” now it’s Valve, especially if they want to make the hardware only to prove the viability of the form factor, and especially since they already have been selling on platforms they don’t own.