it's not like I'd ever expect only real hacker news here (whatever that even means) but let's be honest for a moment this is just an ordinary consumer item lacking anything novel or innovative ... it's basically just a very large smartphone with a game library for an app store.

I don't disagree, but what this does have is commercial backing and branding, and an excuse for game devs to target it - which benefits the Linux gaming ecosystem as a whole (and non-gaming ecosystem too, like look at all the improvements coming to AMD and KDE users, thanks to Valve's involvement).