The Steam Deck is $400. The low end is really just going to be IGPs going forward. IGPs are capable of playing every game in Steam's top 100, this wasn't something you could always say.
Hardware enthusiasts have always had this disconnect with the actual broader PC gaming audience in terms of what PC gaming actually is and what's required for it hardware wise.
What's happening is that there's basically a growing and split and loss of the "multiplatform middle" essentially. The reality is that competing against the consoles for that customer base is more more being viewed as not a lucrative business for the PC hardware side. The PC market is just shifting more so to target low end gamers, PC platform specific gamers, and console+ gamers.