I would guess that users of the Steam machine would mostly be as locked-in to Steam purchases as PS5 users are to PS Store purchases.
I stopped PC gaming about a decade ago and my current daily driver is a Macbook. I periodically play games on my a PS5 or XBOX, but there are a ton of great games on my Steam wishlist.
I feel like I'm the exact target market for this (although I'm not going to buy at this price point at this time). I don't want to bother with Windows and would love a 'console' allowing me to play most Steam games without a lot of hassle.
> I would guess that users of the Steam machine would mostly be as locked-in to Steam purchases as PS5 users are to PS Store purchases.
[pirate flag emoji].
Games from sources other than Steam are a bit more fiddly to get going, but it's far from impossible. Like Valve says, it's your computer.
Steam machine is not locked into the steam client. You can install whatever you want.
The steam machine is just a regular Linux PC, you can install anything you want on it.
I have the Deck and I mostly use it to emulate Switch & PS2 games.