I don’t quite understand the criticism. It’s not gonna be top of the line, but it’s more than enough to replace my dying laptop from 2015 that I pretty much only ever use like a desktop anyway. And I can save myself the time and effort of picking parts, building, and dealing with shit not working as expected.
You are taking the comments too literal. If something is subsidized (which means cheaper than normal) and it is useful as a PC or PC parts, it will be vacuumed up by non-gamers as well.
You are technically correct about mega corps and such but missing the point being made. Every subsidized PC not bought by gamers is lost money for Valve.
Megacorps won’t sit and refresh Steam sure, but fucking scalpers absolutely will. There are lots of shady middlemen companies that will buy them up from eBay and resell to small businesses too.
Hell, I’d snap one up and resell on eBay in a heart beat myself if this thing goes for anything close to what a PS5 sells for. Let’s say $1200 in parts, I buy for $700, I resell for $900, reseller scoops up a few hundred at a time off ebay, sells in bulk to small businesses for $1100… Everyone wins… Valve fucking loses. Now, let’s say a million people do the same thing because it is free money.
This is how this works and why they can’t subsidise this thing like Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft have. (Also why Xbox doesn’t run actual windows for that matter.)