Look at Nintendo's fumble with the Virtual Boy, then the DS series became the industry's de-facto portable platform.Valve have always made it clear that they want to move away from the dependency on Windows due to microsoft's inevitable dropping of x86/win32.
It's why they keep investing in Proton and why i think they will circle back to SteamBox again and again. If they can divorce your steam library from Windows then they have a big chunk of future-proofing in hand.
People laugh at Valve's mis-steps in hardware but i'm sure there's an end goal even if it is a bit fuzzy at times. They'll keep trying new stuff every few years and one day they'll have most of the pieces they need. It's why i don't want them going public, they just wouldn't be allowed by shareholders and investors to experiment like this.
The Wii was "controversial" in terms of "traditional gaming" but everyone owned one. Then there's the misstep with the Wii U, and now, "is it going to be ported to Switch?" is a meme.
So yeah, good companies (not Sega) turn an L into a W