It would be painfully easy for Steam to integrate some hardware polling with a database ranking the parts to give a rough estimate of how well you can run any given Steam game.

I'd argue it surely beats sitting on decade old hardware an entire console cycle. That was probably one of the primary motivators for SteamOS as a consolesque platform - Sony and Microsofts inertia circa 2012 was presenting a gaping hole in the market, and Nintendo's Wii U was (and still is) underwhelming. If Valve could get an open platform with vendor competition and constant product iteration in the living room, it would cement them there as much as it did on Windows digital distribution.

That plan might not have come to complete fruition the way they were hoping, though - both of their chief competitors will have months and a holiday season ahead of them, and SteamOS hasn't announced any launch titles or exclusives to attract early adopters (of the whole living room platform and haptic controller, at least).