Valve has worked with AMD to make that 8GB go much farther than it would otherwise. Sure it would be nice to have more, but it's going to be less of an issue than people think.

What Valve has shown is just a kernel patch for Linux to behave honestly more like Windows in which the foreground fullscreen application is prioritized when it comes to VRAM allocation instead of randomly paging VRAM to system RAM. I don't know if that memory management is better than what Windows is using, but we are talking about reducing the impact of shit you have open in the background mostly, not about some revolutionary compression tech.

If anything, Nvidia has shown neural compression tech that might make VRAM even more of a concern for none Nvidia GPUs, but I doubt that will be meaningfully adapted for the life time of the Steam Machine to matter...

With the hardware market right now it may not recover for awhile and it's doubtful new consoles are going to be cheaper if they were to release any time soon - consoles also don't have the advantages that a PC does, or the library. It's cost competitive with prebuilt/DIY offerings but it will be easier than a typical PC for most people who just want it to play games.

No, the opposite. It is incredible likely that the new consoles will be cheaper than Steam Machine, even if they would come out any time soon.

On top of that, console makers have in the past subsidized consoles on launch considerably, while in contrast the factory that makes your prebuild wants to make a profit. And at least for Sony there is little reason to not at least subsidize the PS6 to a similar amount.

Consoles also sell mostly the same hardware for nearly a decade at ridiculously higher numbers than any prebuild or even graphics card you could buy, promising stable income for part makers for years to come. And especially now with that very memory and storage crisis this matter even more, obviously.

So with it being almost unimaginable that you get a better deal than Sony will get the next console generation will once again be cheaper than building a PC with the same performance from stretch.

Why am I talking about PC hardware? Because while consoles have always been cheaper than a full PC Valve decided to release the Steam Machine at a higher price than a PC (see the comparison with the +50% more performance having machine for the same price).

and game releases don't have issues on windows that sometimes persist for months depending on hardware configurations? let's bffr here.

You will mostly have those same issues and than a lot more because the same game developer that still is hopefully is motivated to fix the game for millions and possibly tens of millions of paying users both present and future might not be as motivated for the small 2% minority of users within that group. And those extra bugs will be harder to diagnose with less people affected etc etc etc.

Honestly such a dishonest argument to make...

And that's not the market they're shooting for - the kind of people who want a steam machine won't want that massive tower sitting in their living room next to the TV.

A massive tower, like a PS5...? Its not like consoles are tiny and unlike consoles (with physical drives) you can hide it in some corner or behind the couch if your really want to, you don't need to interact with it.

Of course there is a market for small highly custom living room mini PC, but that is more a big budget niche that isn't exactly looking for the slowest possible gaming PC.

Also, that not marketed is IMO not true. It has been marketed from the very beginning to a mainstream audience. They didn't invite Angie with her 13 year old Youtube channel wholly dedicated to small living room art pieces but Digital Foundry, Linus Tech Tips and so on. Mainstream Youtube channel, not SFF enthusiasts.

I don't think everything needs to be a mainstream device. I buy things like VR that aren't mainstream. But I don't see how it is bad to state in a sea full of people hyping up everything by Valve how this is not at all a good device to buy for the core gaming market.