End of the day Valve will never work seriously on hardware at a level will allow them to compete.
Hardware is extremely difficult and extremely expensive.
High effort and almost always low to no reward unless you manage to create a breakout device.
Valve already has the business that most people build the hardware for in the first place. The reason Microsoft makes Xbox is to get a cut of game sales and sell a subscription. Valve already gets a cut of almost all PC sales so really trying to build hardware looks bad on almost every conceivable company chart within Valve.
Yet they keep doing it every 5 years ago due to presumably due to their weird management.
They're not building traditional hardware. This is off the shelf components assembled in a particular manner, most likely by a 3rd party.
IMO, this is a great move. They're building a cheap device that plays AAA games in a cool Switch-like form factor. I think targeting teenagers and young adults.
I think the industry is changing how they do business, a mainstream Linux/AMD device is leading the way.
> They're not building traditional hardware. This is off the shelf components assembled in a particular manner
I can tell you from personal experience this isn't easy at all and is just as difficult as any other hardware project, even if you're not literally building new processors or hardware firmwares it's still a huge mission getting something like that to market let alone making it profitable.
I work on a company that has shipped laptops where we designed all the casing with off the shelf processor/storage/etc, so have worked on what you're describing here.
Laptops are completely commoditized, of course you would struggle with profitability there. For a company the size of Valve, building these devices probably carries very little risk. The biggest risk is the software, which they were going to tackle anyway.
Hardware is extremely difficult and extremely expensive.
High effort and almost always low to no reward unless you manage to create a breakout device.
Valve already has the business that most people build the hardware for in the first place. The reason Microsoft makes Xbox is to get a cut of game sales and sell a subscription. Valve already gets a cut of almost all PC sales so really trying to build hardware looks bad on almost every conceivable company chart within Valve.
Yet they keep doing it every 5 years ago due to presumably due to their weird management.