A lot of consoles are sold at a loss, where costs are made up by people buying games through the console on the makers store, I wonder how valve will go about this because I don't see a lot of people getting this that didn't already have steam on another device.
I don't believe that's the case anymore. Newer console generations have moved on from exotic ISAs and the like towards using a lot of off-the-shelf parts for smartphones or PCs. The Switch, for instance, has been sold at a profit from day one [1].
It's portable though. A mobile phone has far less processing power than a workstation or laptop (and some are nearly as expensive) but it's also a fraction of the size / weight / power consumption / heat output.
Not to split hairs but it's the same retail price as an Xbox _series_ S, which is a generation newer. Due to supply issues you are mostly correct, in practical terms.
I don't believe it's ever been the case. On some days (especially early on) the console may sell at a loss, but over the lifetime of the console, the hardware is almost certainly net profitable.
It also really doesn't seem like they have anyone with the skills in their wheelhouse to do good by this.
A big part of differentiating a console from a PC is building an operating system that prioritizes the game process uber alles. It's not just a fancy window manager slapped onto a commodity PC. Even the original Xbox had a lot of custom OS work done to it, stuff that would eventually serve as the test bed for developments in DirectX.
Does Valve even have any operating system developers? I thought their core dev body was mainly focused on screwing modders and getting kids addicted to slot machines.
They are doing a lot of work on Wine as part of Steam Proton (the Wine distribution built into the Linux version of Steam), so I'd imagine they have at least some of this type of developer on staff.
