Valve sold out of steam decks for multiple production runs now. And other companies are now investing in handhelds after seeing the success of it. Steams intention with the Deck was to kick start the handhelds market and make SteamOS the default operating system for that form factor. I don't know if they profit from the deck directly but i definitely have bought more games since owning one.

Not to mention that most people have a favorite game they go back to that runs on older hardware, AAA certainly makes up a very small percentage of my gameplay

If you try to run any new AAA title on any current handheld you're going to have a bad time and bad battery life IMO. I think you could even extend this to modestly old gaming rigs that already struggle badly with poorly optimised new titles.

I see the Deck praised often for its emulation capabilities and indie game performance - and to be honest those aspects are appealing enough to me if I was interested in buying another portable computer.

This is the new Steam Link

Out of curiosity, what makes you think this?

I doubt this is the case as thin client gaming accessories are a very niche product, and the Deck hardware is grossly overqualified in this regard IMO

Anything I have a challenge running at a good frame rate, I'll just locally stream from my PC. 60fps all day long with the power of anything my PC can run. Don't sleep on that local game streaming, super handy and sips power.

You mean like those AAA titles the fucking Switch can't run?

That's literally the only thing close to competition that the Deck has, and it skullfucks it in terms of horsepower.