To be clear, you have to pay to play certain games online. A lot of popular ones are free and general internet access does not cost anything.
A lot of folks also aren't all that interested in playing games online anyway.
A great example of the target audience are the people who've been playing games on the Steam Deck, but want something with a bit more oomf without the hassle of building a PC. I am not in that demographic! But I have a friend who is. He's quite happy to pay more for convenience. He already has a gaming laptop, but I can see him getting this to replace his ancient Steam Link.
If you only compare the hardware, that's true. Even if you don't consider all the other functionality that a PC has vs. a console, add all the different ways to get free and heavily discounted games on Steam/PC, and the results of that calculation might start to look very different.
Anyways, just wanted to add that the steam machine and PCs killer differentiator: a truly open platform that no mac, ps5 and other consoles can offer. Do whatever you want, install whatever software you want, whatever OS you want. Break the rules, face the consequences. Live life like a living being, not as a slave to some corpo.
I take it you meant GP (as in, the post I was responding to - which to this post is actually GGP but I digress).
I don't think it is. Their reasoning is:
> there are reasons someone might want a 6" cube instead of a full PS5 and a mac mini. None of them are low price but they are reasons nonetheless.
Mine is that it is indeed price, only not the price of the hardware alone but rather the price of the ecosystem as a whole. Another aspect that I didn't cover is that a game that you buy today for PC will likely still work on whatever PC you have 20, 30 years from now. The same cannot be said for consoles.
I do agree with your second paragraph though! :)