They tried it without a flagship and without a large library of compatible games.
They now have a flagship first party Steam Machine and Proton to run games. They are also working with partners to create 3rd party Steam OS handhelds.
If steam machines sell well, we will likely see supported 3rd party offerings.
Yes. It’s the Pixel / Surface / strategy: show there is a market for premium, flagship reference devices and let those guide the second tier manufacturers.
You don’t even have to be the #1 vendor, the reference implementation does a lot of good for the ecosystem.
They already tried that the first way around when they introduced steam machines. That didn't really work.
The fact that they now took full control is what's exiting about this steam machine.