That hasn’t been happening since the beginning of video games and it isn’t about to start now. Adjusted for inflation the NES was about $590 at launch and individual games were $90-120. Didn’t stop it from nearly wiping the American video game industry clean off the earth.

To be fair, the American video game industry had pretty well wiped itself off the earth. Nintendo came in and actively worked to present itself as different and did a fair bit of anti-competitive stuff once it got market power: can't release the same game on other platforms, limited release count per developer, strict cartridge hardware controls, etc.

The bigger issue is that they'd scoff at the price and get their kids to play Roblox or Fortnite on some tablet. The steam deck isn't what the console marker is really worried about these days.

Maybe, but if they spend more than $100/mo on alcohol, nails, or weed, then it’s a perspective problem.