On the other other hand, the average system in that survey presumably cost more than what the Steam Machine will retail for, if we're correct in interpreting this as being a competitor to dedicated consoles.

Valve has said it won't have console-like pricing, so.

But even if it's double the price of the PS5/Xbox, it's still likely to be less than the price (at the time of purchase) of the mean PC in the hardware survey. For every gamer out there struggling along on a $500 mini-PC, there's another who plunked down $5,000 to play Cookie Clicker at 8K/240 FPS.

Why does it even matter? Maybe Valve will finally bring an end to this madness of upgrading your PC every year.