It’s more of a line in the sand or a gradient than a hard point of “pass this and you’re not human anymore”.

Oh look, you stumbled on to the point. Valve would benefit from making a more console-like pc (a la the steam boxes from yesteryear) because it could get more people into the valve ecosystem. There are people who buy consoles simply because they offer the simplicity of buying a prebuilt thing that you don’t need to fudge around with and comes integrated with everything you need to run the games.

Also, the more console-like approach could be used to give external GPUs more uses. Sure, not everyone is going to get an eGPU, but it would be a nice option to have, instead of just having to replace the whole thing or offering two or three models of it like the various PS3 models, PS4 and it’s Pro model, and the rumored PS5 Pro and the rumoured new base model with a detachable drive…