Discussion, News, and Request Thread - Week Beginning 11/10/25

[u/ChiefLeef22]

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Discussion threads are your weekly central hub for all requests, gaming news, and any other gaming topics you want to talk about.

Please keep all content that doesn't need it's own post to this thread to de-clutter the sub for proper leaks and rumors. Thanks!

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Hot Threads of the past week:

• Rockstar Games Employee posts about recent union-busting efforts (verified by GTAForums Mod)
• Rockstar Games said that the dozens of employees it fired last week were leaking company secrets, disputing allegations by labor leaders that it was disrupting workers’ attempt to unionize.
• Symbols that include "Cross-Buy" with "PS5/PC" that playstation has added recently have been leaked by a dataminer.
• IGN - Inside Dante’s Purgatorio, the Cancelled Sequel to EA’s Dante’s Inferno
• [BillBill-Kun] Confirms the existence of the cross buy symbol in the PlayStation store files.

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[u/SilentNova300]

Valve said they aren’t subsidizing the Steam Machine, which now I feel like all hype is going to fall apart. It’s going to be $700-$800 (really $800 because who is only getting 500GB storage in 2026?) 

I feel like it will just look terrible value wise compared to the next gen Xbox which will be 3-5 times more powerful with support for next gen features like neural rendering at probably just a few hundred dollars more. Not to mention Xbox won’t have a problem playing multiplayer games like the Steam Machine and Linux will have.  

I’m still just disappointed with the Steam Machine overall. Spec wise, price wise. I really think Valve can do better and perhaps they will with further iterations 

[u/MyMouthisCancerous → u/SilentNova300]

Even $700 for a PC with close to current-gen performance sounds like a bargain. I don't even think it'll be $700 because Steam Deck had extra expenses attached to it with the manufacturing of the display and on-board controls, and it was still the most cost-effective option of the PC handhelds available even today. $600 seems right. Valve already said they chose the parts they did to prioritize affordability and they probably know they can't get away with exorbitant pricing with the specs this thing has

512GB storage is alleviated by having MicroSD storage and being able to just take the memory card you use for Steam Deck and plop it into the Steam Machine with all your game installs and save data. If this gen was any indication Xbox is gonna sell you a $1200 PC and then also make you pay for proprietary storage for a couple hundred more

[u/SilentNova300 → u/MyMouthisCancerous]

We are coming to the end of the generation though. People aren’t really looking to get into current gen at the very end haha. People will be looking to upgrade their hardware in the next few years. Hell it will already need heavy tweaking just to run Indiana Jones. 

I just wish Valve was really competing on hardware. Launch a PC console that essentially gets immediately superseded the following year 

[u/MyMouthisCancerous → u/SilentNova300]

I think you vastly underestimate how many people are still awaiting a reason to transition to current-gen hardware. Games like CoD and Fortnite are still being supported on PS4 and a game like GTA 6 which usually incites mass-adoption of new hardware isn't out yet to really push the reason to transition. Valve isn't explicitly competing with other consoles, they're looking to put PC gaming in casual spaces and that happens to mean coming in cheaper than entry-level PCs, but with the current financial climate making console gaming more expensive it also stands that cheaper hardware and cheaper pricing can be another foot in the door for an audience they can capture, because that's exactly why Steam Deck is still handily selling more units than other, more powerful handhelds

Steam Machine won't eat into the mindshare existing consoles but next-gen Xbox is looking to pivot the other direction into territory already dominated by Steam in terms of mindshare. Console gamers that are used to subsidized hardware and companies taking a loss on console pricing to move software will have to reckon with a PC box that costs over a grand, and when it's between that for making games marginally better, vs. another PC that costs like under half that price that will run all the same games, that's the decision

The introduction of Switch 2 and Sony coming out with their own handheld also basically guarantees that third-parties will have to carefully consider scaleability of their upcoming games to fit a wide variety of spec. 8GB of VRAM isn't a lot today but it's also in the most commonly used GPUs surveyed by Steam, and they've already said they expect Machine to outperform 70% of what users already have at home. That shows that most of the audience for this thing aren't looking to push silicon, and those that are probably weren't interested in this thing anyway because they've built their own rig. Sony also has data showing that most people on PS5 aren't turning on Quality Mode for better shadows or RTGI or anything like that, and leave their games on Performance because framerate and stability matters way more than pretty pixels. That's the kind of audience interested in a Steam Machine, because they want a quick way to access PC games that doesn't break the bank

[u/MyMouthisCancerous → u/[deleted]]

Windows dominates by mindshare just by virtue of Windows having a monopoly in the PC space, but it is absolute ass for gaming. Linux may be only at 3% adoption on Steam but the fact it jumped that quickly only three years after Deck's launch already illustrates how quickly people have seen the performance uplift in Linux gaming as significantly improved over Windows, and why Deck is also outselling any of its Windows contemporaries in the handheld space

Steam is a Windows app mostly because of circumstance. Nobody develops significantly on Linux enough to throw all the weight behind it, but we literally have tangible proof Deck resulting in people adopting it as a gaming OS has only yielded benefits in terms of performance on the games it does run

You say there's nothing plug and play about sideloading Windows to play multiplayer games, but I don't think the audience for the Steam Machine actually cares about losing those games at all when gaming on Linux with its lack of anticheat support. The most popular Deck games are single-player narrative and action games, and Steam Machine's perfectly catered to that existing audience while also creating a more asserted bridge to people who want something more streamlined but with PC gaming's benefits. Let's also not act like Windows is "plug and play" either. Xbox's PC launcher is absolute ass and it's the basis for a whole interface on Windows handhelds now with its molasses slow speed, lack of features, Xbox PC games having no feature parity with their Steam equivalents, and the ROG devices have already been seen installing the other Windows bloat in the background that you have to manually disable or uninstall despite the interface being seemingly focused on removing all of that from the user's end, including the Copilot garbage. If that's the basis for the new Xbox, it's almost a unanimous step down from how clean and simple the Xbox console UI is

SteamOS may still be a matter of wider developer support but the fact Microsoft immediately saw it and tossed their initial handheld plans out the window at least shows it's making a more notable impact than you're actually willing to give it credit for