Valve certainly has the luxury of being able to eat the costs of tariffs to sell more steam decks. They will make the money back from Steam, when the hardware only manufacturers have no reason to sell at a loss.
They may still subsidized by Microsoft or other strategic partners (like McAfee antivirus). IE: Microsoft could promise a share cut on every videogame sale made a registered xbox handheld; while this is still not enough to sell at loss, they (the OEM) may still consider reduce/forfeit they expected earning from each piece of hardware sold.
Valve certainly has the luxury of being able to eat the costs of tariffs to sell more steam decks. They will make the money back from Steam, when the hardware only manufacturers have no reason to sell at a loss.
They may still subsidized by Microsoft or other strategic partners (like McAfee antivirus). IE: Microsoft could promise a share cut on every videogame sale made a registered xbox handheld; while this is still not enough to sell at loss, they (the OEM) may still consider reduce/forfeit they expected earning from each piece of hardware sold.