Of course it was, they are talking about the 2012~2015 (not sure about the exact date) steam machine that was released and failed. It took a long time for enough pieces to fall into place that would lead to the success of the steam deck and now the, too soon to call a success, launch of the new steam machine (2026).
The original Steam Machines were a line of pre-made PCs with SteamOS from various vendors. Valve made a reference machine, but it was never widely available. The device released today is their first product that's actually called "Steam Machine".
Also this was back before Proton. You could only play games that natively supported linux, which was hardly any back then.