Valve make no profit on the consoles themselves right? And if the steam deck profit model of making their money off of games applies to games bought on any handheld, then why not let the other companies have the higher end market and all the research and development costs that making a new console needs. Especially because each new generation would need a refresh to stay on top.(more r and d costs) So why wouldnt valve just keep making their current steam deck that runs stuff well enough for them to keep selling games.
It’s clear Valve above all else has pushed aggressively to make the Steam Deck affordable. That’s why you see all the competing handhelds being substantially more expensive, and that’s also why Valve omitted certain upgrades that make sense, but would bump the price up.
Valve clearly also cares about the ecosystem, which is why they don’t want to release a new, faster unit every year. It would leave existing customers behind. They clearly want to go with more of a console generations kind of thing, both in terms of support and affordability.
Making a good product is a challenge, making a product good and cheap is very hard, and requires some hard choices and trade-offs. That’s why there aren’t metal threaded inserts, that’s why the screen isn’t Full HD, that’s why the APU has four cores and not six, that’s why the battery isn’t bigger, the list goes on.