One of the main failures of the Steam Machine was that there was no baseline “steam machine.” They were just a myriad of prebuilt machines running a specific OS, and was especially confusing to people not already into PC gaming.

The Steam Deck fixed that by being just one thing (pedants fuck off, you know what I mean). If their next console like offering is indeed console like and not just a rebranded PC ecosystem, it probably will see more success than their first venture in Steam Machines.