They don’t have the means to produce at scale, which has resulted in wild price fluctuations on their end. (even though to steamdeck OLED did sell out at the much higher price.) To me at most they will continue with the controller, but that’s about it.


I’d say no. Small production scale, highly niche target audience, moderately-to-significantly higher than average pricing for Steam/ Valve hardware has pretty much always been their thing.
Basically, Steam / Valve hardware (and the company in general) have a strong “for gamers, by gamers” reputation. One of their methods of maintaining that reputation is by incorporating, for lack of a better term, “premium quirks” into their things (Steam Link was relatively novel at its release (and kinda sucked), the OG Steam controller with the dual touchpads and gyroscope, finger tracking and grip strength monitoring on the Valve Index controllers). They know that the Average Joe gamer will probably just pick up a Quest headset or an Xbox controller, so rather than try to fight for market share that has a built-in customer base (for example, most people that already own a console will just use the controller they already have rather than buy a new one for their PC), they maintain their “gamers first” reputation by offering a more niche, “premium” option.
Edit: Also, I’ve never not seen the Deck being touted as a massive success. Like you said, even at higher than normal prices people will buy them. It would be silly for them not to keep that money printer going, they don’t even necessarily need to increase production, people will practically buy them at whatever speed they come off the line.