[LordDragonfang]

> Would be a massive hit I wager.

I strongly doubt it. Steam already tried releasing a console alternative, Steam boxes, and they massively flopped. By and far the main reason for the Steam deck's success is its portable form factor, not the fact that it's a linux machine that runs games. It succeeded in spite of the software, not because of it.

The overwhelming majority of users are going to want either a "real" (read: Windows) PC, or a "real" (read: the same one their friends have) console.

[Etheryte]

This misses why the old Steam Machine was a failure: it was half baked hardware with few games that would run well on it. With the work they've put into the Steam Deck they've largely solved both of those issues, they now have a stable platform and also a sizable library of games that just work, no tinkering required.

[oxygen_crisis]

Steam Deck succeeded where Steam Machines flopped because of nearly a decade of advancement on the Proton compatibility layer, so the catalog of eligible games is orders of magnitude larger than it was in 2015.

When Steam Machines re-launch with the current generation of Proton compatibility it will be an entirely different story.