I tested a few more games out this evening and tried a few older titles to see how they handle.
Skyrim is now nearly 10 years old so it's hardware requirements are not so high by today's standards. Steam shows it as playable with issues. I played it for over an hour and had no problems. And running the game on ultra graphics settings it held solid at 60fps and looked very nice. The controls map nicely to the Deck's controls and it played really well. No issues and I might actually play through the whole game again on it.
I know Skyrim is not quite a few years old. But for me it's still a bit mind blowing to see a game that only a few years ago was a showcase game pushing systems and GPUs to there limit. And now a handheld system costing less then a cheap PC build can run the game perfectly on high settings with no issues. And more impressive is the fact such games were never designed or intended to work like this. And thr fact this is running a 9+ year old Windows game in Linux using an abstraction layer.
It has got me thinking. Steam OS is now reaching a maturity, with so much work Valve are devoting to it, with the success of the Steam Deck helping to quickly bug fix and improve it, and the speed and level of support and development it's currently being seen. There are only a few areas of Steam OS that still need a bit of work. The knscreen keyboard being the Meon one that still needs a few tweaks. But in the whole in game mode Steam OS doesn't need any real experience of computers. You can literally install and play PC games exactly as you would on a Playstation. Therfore Valve could attempt another console in the future with a seperate controller to play Windows games as a console in your TV just like an Xbox or PS5. The issue when they tried it originally was the OS. The first versions of Steam OS were just a Linux OS with a Linux copy of Steam, and it could only run native Kinux games. So very limiting and a bit pointless. But that led to where we are now. Steam OS seemlessly running Windows games like a console. That would work as a console, not just as a handheld. If they used the same hardware as the Deck they could produce thrm even cheaper. Say the £299 price point.
I also think the real success of the Steam Deck and Steam OS is also the fact it's not running Windows. Windows is so bloated and resource heavy because it has to be so compatible for such a range of hardware setups. Steam OS on the Steam Deck basically makes it a fixed platform just like a console. They can develop the OS knowing all hardware is identical, so can optimise it knowing every device will function and perform the same. They can just concentrate on getting games working.