UPDATE: Despite saying they were using SteamOS on the homepage, they’ve since clarified that it’s actually “an optimized version based on HoloISO”. HoloISO seems to be a community compiled version of SteamOS. It’s very similar but it’s not officially SteamOS.
Now the handheld market gets really good.
Judging from their history of rapid releases, I’d say this is more a matter of just throwing it out there to see if it sticks because “why not?”
Worst case, it fails, they’re out a little bit of capital, but can just as easily swap it over to Windows and keep selling it that way. Best case, they’ve opened the market up that little bit more for themselves.