People can always buy on another platform if a publisher chooses to make it available. This isn't the iPhone app store, where you're mostly stuck with whatever

People can always buy on another platform if a publisher chooses to make it available. This isn't the iPhone app store, where you're mostly stuck with whatever Apple demands from you. You are also absolutely wrong about indie titles. Many of the games that I'm presented on my personalized top pages on Steam are indie. And Steam makes it very easy to find indie games. I don't understand your point on "marketing exists for a reason and it's also costly". You seem to be undercutting yourself by saying that the marketing provided by the Steam store provides actual value. Selling hardware at a loss only makes sense when you control everything that's done with it. Consoles can be sold at losses because they can't (generally) be used for purposes other than playing games on which the console makers make money. But a Steam Deck is just a PC. If they sold them at a loss, people could just buy them and use them as PCs.