When Valve introduced its Steam Machine cube gaming console/PC, the gaming community began questioning the hardware choices and Valve's performance claims. However, a Valve engineer stated that the Steam Machine is more powerful than 70% of gaming PCs on the market, based on Steam Survey data. It fe...
The difference is, is that the Steam Deck is a handheld and for what it can do as a handheld is actually impressive. Given how the handheld market is dominated by Nintendo.
The Steam Machine is marketing itself as a console and a PC, two things in where it can be outclassed in.
Valve has incentive on getting developers to make games that will play on lower speced hardware. Also, not everyone cares to pay premium prices for premium specs.
It will do just fine and it should accomplish Valves goals.