The Steam Machine will be a niche device at best. The reason PS5 has dominated over Xbox is because people built their digital libraries last gen, and they aren't likely to move once they've done that. No one is going to sacrifice that to start over on Steam.
And that ignores the fact that it's a device seemingly for no one. It's too expensive for console players looking to jump into PC, and too underpowered for current Steam users already invested in the ecosystem.
Might just be me, but do players actually expect odd off-year birthdays to be a major event? I mean, I get 5 year, 10 year. As a culture, we like to mark milestones like that, even if it's arbitrary, but there's nothing all that special about 7 years, really.
I think this speaks more to the entitlement live service games have given us as a whole.
Like others are saying here, UE5 looks pretty, but it can't do what Creation does, especially where object interaction is concerned, without some serious performance hits. And that's not even touching on Beth having one of the most developed modding communities in gaming. UE is moddable to a degree, but they'd be alienating the very community that gave their games their longevity.
