People are missing the forest for the trees imo.
The name of the game now is ecosystem spread.. Nintendo tried to spread to mobile devices, Sony and Microsoft are experimenting with PC/Cloud/Mobile. Valve is preparing with Steam Deck etc.. They are all preparing with various degrees for an ecosystem future when it comes to gaming, which might not be coming any time soon, but they would be remiss to completely ignore.
Meanwhile, arguably the largest, most cohesive and profitable ecosystem holder with the best manufacturing and supply chain execution in the market, with strong design/software chops AND a slowly-proven taste for excellence in media production as well is just gonna sit there and twiddle its thumbs?
No. They are going to enter this space sooner or later, and when they do, it's gonna be through leveraging its already existing ecosystem and customer base. They're not gonna suddenly try to sell brand new dedicated consoles to like 300m people that already have presences on competing ecosystems. The far simpler and profitable strategy is to try and sell your existing base on the idea of hardcore gaming on their iPads iPhones MacBooks Mac Minis AppleTVs etc, it's a market of users that has already been built and incorporated into their walled garden, all that remains is to organize the marketplace for devs and publishers to join in, especially if porting is simple.
You might say that this creates fragmentation of experience due to hardware differences, but that didn't stop PCs from becoming a huge consumer hotbed, just like you have a min spec for PC games, you will likely have games that are "only recommended" for iPad air 5 and above etc etc.
A lot of the basic assumptions we have about a brand new gaming entrant are simply not applicable here. Hell, Apple already has a presence in gaming, so it's not technically new either!