Valve’s Steam Machine Returns: Can It Outpace Xbox and Redefine the Console Experience?

Krafton is now looking to get some voluntary layoffs because it wants to be, quote unquote, AI first company.

I don't think it's going to go very well, but sure, you don't do this 15 minutes before your earnings call because that just really just shows people shouldn't actually invest in your company.

It just has not gone well for Ubisoft and the reason is because they don't listen to the gamers.

They make games that we don't really want.

It just they need to focus on the quality and stop doing template building of games because it all feels the same and it really needs to not feel the same anymore.

The problem is that companies aren't enhancing workflows, they're changing their workflows because they think AI is the future when it's not there yet.

But make no mistake, Valve has made a huge statement to the gaming industry on what to do, on how to create products that people want, on how to figure out your customer and what they want.

Hey, good to have you back on Digital Coffee Gaming Brew.

I'm your digital barista, Brett Dyster.

So much has gone down this week.

Kingdom Deliverance 2's DLC drama, Ubisoft acting all sketchy with their stocks, Craftsman jumping on the AI bandwagon, and Valve just dropped a bunch of new Steam gear.

I've got your favorite digital brew and let's chat about all the crazy that's happening in the gaming industry right now.

That's good.

All right.

I hope you're having a fantastic weekend.

If you're a Call of Duty fan, I hope you're playing the new Call of Duty and enjoying it, because I don't really care if you like it or not.

That's up to you.

Anyways, the final plan DLC of Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 is finally out.

It was titled Mysteria Escala.

Basically it's religious in nature and the DLC has been received as mixed in response on Steam, with 432 reviews and 64% being positive.

Players have criticized DLC for its reliance on stealth, lack of new locations, and minimal impact on the overall game game.

Previous DLC Legacy of the Forge and Brushes with Death also received mixed reviews, but were viewed more favorably in comparison to the newest dlc.

Players have noted that the DLC offers very little in terms of new content, including only one sword, one helmet, one tal bird.

This could be a very interesting way of ending it.

Might not be the best way of ending it, but overall the game itself has been reviewed really, really well, so I would not really be against getting this game if it got yet.

It's been on sales multiple times.

It's been one of the best games in 2025, especially in the first part of 2025, excluding Expedition 33 and excluding Arc Raiders because those came out and Battlefield 6 those came out later this year.

But in the beginning part this was probably one of the best ones so far.

If you haven't played the original game, I recommend the original game.

It's a little bit more jankier, but it's still really, really good game if you love RPGs in a medieval setting without magic, because there is absolutely no magic in this game.

It is all about learning how to swing a sword, learning and he learns along the way.

The character learns along the way on how to shoot an arrow and all that stuff.

So it is a good game overall.

A little skeptical about why they changed some of the characters and included minorities in there, but beyond that it's still a good game.

All right, moving on to Ubisoft and It's announced on November 13, 2025 that it would postpone the release of its earnings until the publication's first half of 2025.

2026.

The announcements made 15 minutes before scheduled call with investors, which was on Thursday or yesterday.

Ubisoft requested Euronext to halt trading on its shares and bonds starting from the market opening on November 14, which is today Friday.

Until the delayed results are published.

The suspension of trading will remain in effect until Ubisoft announces a new date for trading to restart.

The statement regarding the postponement was shared with Rutgers and posted on various social media channels.

The reason behind this is still unknown, but this is not a good sign for a company.

You don't do this 15 minutes before your basically your earnings call because that just really just shows people shouldn't actually invest in your company.

Also, it shows that it probably is going to get acquired probably from Tencent or one of the other Chinese or Asian companies right.

Right now because Ubisoft has not been doing well.

Assassin's Creed Shadows did not perform well.

Star Wars Outlaws did not perform well.

I don't even think Avatar performed that well either.

The three big games that they came out with all did not perform well and they did a little bit of goodwill with Assassin's Creed Mirage of doing this new free update probably because it has not been going well for them.

They've had way too many mishaps and missteps with Far Cry 6 and the inclusion of Trans Ideology from also An Assassin's Creed Shadows trans ideology and really taking a very controversial character in history and embellishing it, it seems like.

So there was a lot of issues with what they were doing and.

And they didn't figure it out or didn't go, maybe we shouldn't do that.

Maybe, just maybe, we should probably should focus on Japanese characters in feudal Japan.

Not one black guy in field Japan from history.

But that's where we're at right now.

Are we going to see new Ghost Recon?

Maybe, maybe not.

Are we going to see new Splinter Cell?

Probably not.

We've probably never seen a new Splinter Cell for whatever reason.

Are we ever going to see a new version of Rainbow Six Siege?

Maybe, maybe not.

It's been going well, I guess for the past decade or so.

It feels like I'm more than a decade with it, but it just has not gone well for Ubisoft.

And the reason is because they don't listen to the gamers and they make games that we don't really want.

Assassin's Creed was a great franchise when the first three games came out, or the first lineage of games because it went from Assassin's Creed, Assassin's Creed 2, and then Ezio was like the main focus for three games and that kind of ended that and then they went off on their own.

Assassin's Creed 3 is now looked at better.

Assassin's Creed Unity is probably the pinnacle of Assassin's Creed because of the way it.

The movement and everything.

Assassin's Creed Black Flag is one of the best because of just how it is.

Even though it was heavily influenced for Skull and Bones, just Skull and Bones just never did anything.

Xdefiant never really took off, but Ubisoft never really gave it a chance to recover and do better.

And so there were a lot of issues.

Supposedly Division 3 is in development, but we aren't quite sure about that.

But they have a lot of good franchises.

It's just they need to focus on the quality and stop doing template building of games because it all feels the same and it really needs to not feel the same anymore.

And steer clear from a highly controversial topics too.

If you really want to make a great game, make sure it is what the majority of people want to see and hear.

If you do that, it'll be more than likely do well.

If you don't and you double down and call gamers racist and everything like that, it definitely will not do well.

So we'll see what actually happens with this.

But this is very interesting and very concerning for this company.

And I'm pretty sure the employees are freaking out right now.

All right, moving on to Crafting and The publisher of PlayerUnknown Battlegrounds and PUBG and Subnautical 2 announced plans to become an AI first company and will invest over 130 billion won, or 88 million, in AI infrastructure starting in 2026.

The company launched a voluntary resignation program for domestic employees that offers buyouts based on their length of service, ranging from six months salary for employees with one year or less of service to 36 months of salary from those with over 11 years.

Krafton reported a record quarterly profit of 1.052 trillion won, or 717 million, during a Nov. 4 earnings call.

The company has halted hiring for new positions except for those developing original intellectual properties and AI related roles.

Kraftin stated that the resignation program is not aimed at workforce reduction, but is intended to support employees in deciding their future direction amid AI transformation.

Krafton is involved in a lawsuit with the Austin founders of Unknown Worlds regarding the development of Subnautical 2.

So here's the thing.

There's a thing called AI slop and Crafton seems to be going into the AI slop realm in even Amazon went into the AI slop realm by basically getting rid of 14,000 employees in their gaming division because they couldn't compete with Steam because they had the wrong strategy to compete with Steam.

You don't put your games on Steam if you want to compete with Steam.

You also don't make a cloud based system that is $15 a month and you have to buy the controller and then go please use our cloud gaming system and then go no, we'll just put it in prime because nobody's using it.

And then go after you sack 14,000 employees and basically cancel New World so there's no more updates.

I basically uninstalled the game and then cancel the Lord of the Rings MMO and go yeah, we're just going to focus on Snoop Dogg's game that was made by AI and I'm like never play that game ever.

AI doesn't work right now.

It's not that good at doing this stuff.

I get that.

It's the newfangled thing.

And I use AI too to help me automate my editing process.

But that's not changing my voice, it's not eliminating me.

That is just enhancing the workflow.

The problem is that companies aren't enhancing workflows, they're changing their workflows because they think AI is the future when it's not there yet.

It's Good at a lot of things.

And it does amazing things with videos that you would take hours upon hours to animate.

But it does not have the capacity to be creative.

It can help you.

And I always said in the beginning stages, do Q and A or quality assurance with it, which basically means that it will speed up time on figuring out like choke points, like where the action would be and then figuring out a better solution if it's not really good.

And then having humans in playing the game, getting the feel of it.

Because AI cannot tell you the feel of a game.

It can tell you just really basically the hard facts about where things happen and where things may be choke points and stuff, but that's about.

It may help with design, but that's map design.

Like I said, very hard and straight facts.

Map designs, not the feel of it, but just to help with the back end and everything else.

You still have to check everything with AI because AI will lie to you.

So this is not a good sign for krafton.

I don't think that you're really thinking this through.

I think there's just seeing dollar signs because everybody is trying to use AI to more than what it should be using right now.

I'm not saying eventually it can't overtake it, do a great job.

I don't know when it will be able to do that.

That's the problem.

No one knows when it's gonna be able to do that.

I see too many LinkedIn posts about the greatness of AI and I'm like, yeah, it's cool and you can tell it what to do and it can sometimes do a good job and sometimes it doesn't do a good job.

Sometimes it makes up facts, sometimes it actually is factual and you could tell it to mimic things, but it won't truly come up with something new.

Now we could get into more philosophical debate and saying that not even humans come up with very new things.

We just regurgitate things because things get out of popularity or awareness and then it comes back.

But we still try our best to make new things that we haven't seen or heard of through our own minds.

So, Crafton, I don't think this is going to do a very good job for you.

I think this is a massive mistake.

But more power to you.

All right.

Arc Raiders.

So ARC Raiders Update 1.2.0 has been released on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X and S. The updates includes bugs, fixes and improvements.

The updates includes the additional new map called Stella Motus and two new arcs.

The Matriarch and the Shredder.

Crafting costs for several items, including arc motion cores, circuitry and launcher ammo have been reduced, while the Wolf Pack grenade now requires an extra refined explosive.

The update addresses an issue where fireball arcs would get stuck on security gates, allowing them to not pursue players more effectively.

A significant fix was made to reduce character movement latency on the server, which improves the desync problem that caused players to appear dead damaged while behind cover.

Also, they nerf the security breach perk which is part of the survival skill trees.

Security breach perk allowed players to open security lockers which contain additional loot.

Therefore, it was implemented because the rewards for these lockers were deemed excessive.

So it really was a really great perk and so they adjusted it.

That's a good thing.

They're listening to it.

Yeah, I've heard from a bunch of different people that on Arc Raiders you just basically just do everything in your survival or survivor tree if you're solo, because it's just the best.

And so I think they're gonna have to rebalance it where there's be some negativities to it to offset the other actual skill trees.

But we'll see actually what actually happens with all this and how this will shake out.

But Arc Raiders is still a really great game.

Now, for those of you that are complaining about it being PvPve, it was.

I know in the beginning it wasn't that it was just PvE, but they changed it to add some dynamic, interesting plays and social dynamics to it.

If you don't like it, then you shouldn't have bought it.

But arguing that there should be a split is not gonna work.

You split the community, you split everything else and it just feels weird.

So they're never going to do this if they're smart.

If they're not as smart, they probably will try to figure out how to do something like that, but they're smart.

They'll keep the community all together, all in one.

You can stick to this beginner map and shoot everybody in sight if you want to do that.

But you should not be expecting a game that has both players and AI to be either or.

It just doesn't work.

It splits the community and you do not want a split community because then it drops.

So you're upset about it.

I'm sorry, go play Escape from Duck off or another game that is only PvE.

But this is a player versus player versus environment and that's how it should remain.

All right, so Valve released three products this past week.

The Steam Frame the Steam controller and the Steam Machine Steam controller was already released about 10 years ago.

So this is a version 2 or gen 2 and steam machine same thing, version 2, gen 2.

So it looks very interesting and the Steam frame actually makes me more excited for VR.

I've never cared about VR whatsoever.

I thought it was just annoying, bulky and just not worth it.

This actually makes it a lot more worth it than before.

So the Steam controllers, do you have Bluetooth in it?

They do have the magnetic thumbsticks which will help with stick drift.

They also have Bluetooth which I said before and is wireless, but the wireless puck also is the charger as well.

Also they said that the controller work with even games that don't have controller layouts with it, which is good.

You can use it on the Steam Machine, you can use it on the Steam Deck and I'm pretty sure anywhere else that has Bluetooth or anything like that.

So really cool.

The Steam machines will target upscaled 4K resolution on 60 frames per second, but that has to be with FSR.

The steam machine features HDMI CEC hooks for TV control, automatic updates for games, and the operating system which will be SteamOS, which will be Linux.

So there will be some games you cannot play I. E. Battlefield 6 and the newest Call of Duty because they need to do secure boot.

So that's a negative.

So there's that.

And it looks like approximately 20% of steam deck users, which equate to about few million people, dock their system to play games on tv, which I do as well.

It does a pretty good job at it.

Here's where we're at with all this.

Valve is doing a really good job at making cost effective hardware to play your Steam games anywhere.

I know that others have made Steam Deck alternatives, but they're way more expensive than what Steam Deck does.

Is Steam Deck the best hardware I've ever seen?

No, but that's not the point of a Steam Deck.

The point of a Steam Deck is to have a handheld device that you can play most games on for a few hours and then you have to charge it again.

That's the one downside is the battery life is not great, but it's repairable and it actually has Linux on there too, so you could turn it into a mini computer if you wanted to.

With the Steam Machine you could technically play the games that aren't compatible with Steam Deck through the Internet and use it as a handheld device.

Kind of like the Wii U was, but better.

Plus this turns Steam into more console like territory which will eat into Xbox, PlayStation and maybe Nintendo.

Probably not Nintendo because they have their own thing.

You cannot play games on any other device but Nintendo.

The biggest hurt will probably be Microsoft because Xbox is having issues with its hardware.

It's not bad hardware, it's pricey now since they did the upage in the price for their consoles.

They also upped the prices of Xbox Game Pass.

The PC one's the only most affordable one out of all of them and you can still play call of duty 2.

The issue for Microsoft Xbox is are you going to continue to do hardware or are you going to go Sega's way and just focus on making games?

Because to be honest with you, the 900 to $1,200 Xbox PC doesn't make a whole lot of sense anymore.

Because if Steam or Valve goes, hey, the Steam machine is going to be about 400 to $500.

People will pick the Steam machine all day.

Why?

Because I can play my Steam library through my tv.

I could have Steam controllers which are really good.

They aren't the best looking one.

But I don't stare at my controller when I'm playing games.

It's weird that people are like, it's so ugly.

I'm like, yeah, because we were staring at our controller the whole time.

I don't care if it feels good, if it works well, if it connects well.

I don't care about anything else.

And this is probably why Sony or PlayStation is looking to do cross platform on their own portal and not use Steam anymore because they now view them as a competitor.

Even though I don't know how well that's going to go because I have to download another stupid digital store.

It's all annoying.

But make no mistake, Valve has just made a huge statement to the gaming industry on what to do, on how to create products that people want, on how to figure out your customer and what they want.

We want a, for TV wise, a moderately priced device that we can play our old games on and new games.

They just did backwards compatibility just by making the Steam machine it's backwards compatible to all your Steam library.

You don't have to get new games if you don't want to.

You can play the old ones and you can play the new ones and you can play on the go with the Steam deck and you can play it on your TV or you can play on your computer.

You have options and you can play in VR because the VR is actually pretty moderately decently priced.

I'm pretty sure it will be.

I'm not really sure about that, no one really knows the prices so far, but I'm pretty sure it'll be mildly priced and it looks like it's a dongle.

It has the motion controllers with it as well and it doesn't look that heavy.

My issue with VR so far is that there's a lot of extra stuff that you have to set up.

It's bulky, it's heavy, it just doesn't work very well.

But this could change my mind.

I'm still not as set on it.

Like I said, it has piqued my interest, but only to a certain extent has it piqued my interest.

I still want to see like really good games come to VR and really the only one that I know of is Half Life Alyx and that's the only one that actually is a really good game on VR.

A lot of the other stuff is okay, maybe Beat Saber is another really good one, but it's kind of like Dance Dance Revolution except in VR because you're just.

Or Guitar Hero or one of those.

So PC gamers will still heavily endorse Valve because they are giving them a reason to be like, I know this is a dominant company in gaming, but they cater to the gamers, they understand what gamers want and they take their time and sometimes they fail, but they come back years later or a decade later.

The original Steam controller was a great product, it was an interesting product and they stopped selling it for a while and they relaunched it and made it better.

Steam Machine, they didn't control the hardware side of it, they had partners do it and they controlled the OS part about it and it was half baked.

It wasn't really great.

Steam Deck did a better job.

They learned their lesson from it and they made it better.

They improved, improved the Steam os, they improved Proton Linux and now they're releasing it.

And now you can play your old games with getting new games and you don't have to worry about is this compatible with this hardware.

How is Xbox going to compete?

How is PlayStation going to compete?

I know they have great games, I know they have great franchises.

Xbox hasn't done a great job with their franchises, but they still have a lot of great ones.

Sony has a lot of great ones too, but you can't play the old games on PlayStation, which is very annoying.

You can play some of them because there's on the catalog, but then you have to do a subscription on the catalog and with Steam you don't do that at all.

If you have old games, you can play the old games as Long as they work.

It gets to a certain extent where some of them are really, really old and you just can't play them anymore.

But you can play 10 year old games.

Pretty sure they'll work really, really well.

But it's just one of those things.

Valve just made a statement to the whole industry on how to do it right and the industry is going to eventually have to react.

Probably won't do very well.

I'm still waiting for Epic to bring some competition to Valve and I don't think they done a really great job in general.

The only thing they've done well is look, we'll give you free games.

Like all right, thanks.

I'll still never use you.

You won't be my main thing that I use.

Heck, I've almost switched over completely just to Steam.

Only because it's just so convenient.

Is it going to become a monopoly?

Probably.

But they did it because they were smart.

EA app sucks.

Ubisoft's Kinect thing sucks.

Epic sucks.

The Bethesda one really sucked.

Bell that's all right.

Xbox app sucks.

God.

Galaxy is probably the only true competitor, but they stopped really updating it or making it like the all in one thing.

I'm trying out Codex, which I don't know if I really like it very much.

The Rockstar app, I don't think they're even doing that anymore.

Like it's funny.

Steam still is the best one because they keep on updating and making it better.

Maybe a little slow in their updates, their visualization for a UI perspective, but it works.

It works great.

And all my games are there.

So the rest of the industry has to figure out what it's going to do because you have to bring the competition or you're just going to have to accept it being the monopoly.

It is because it does everything for the most part really well and right.

Because it's customer focused, not investor focused.

That's the difference.

If you're customer focused, your investors will be happy.

If your investor is focused, your customers usually won't be happy because investors, all they care about is the revenue coming in.

And if revenue never comes in, you've got issues.

So how are you going to react?

Xbox, how are you gonna react?

Sony?

Because Nintendo doesn't matter.

They're doing their own thing.

It doesn't really matter.

But how are you gonna react?

How is Epic gonna react?

They've been, they just been fighting Google and Apple.

Hopefully they're trying to hopefully get Valve to drop their 30%.

I don't think it's working very well because they can't really sue Steam because they aren't the only storefront that people can download, so they can't really go after them.

Now with the Steam machines they probably have a better use case, but still it's an optional thing and Valve has Linux backed into it.

So if you want to get out of the Steam os, you still have Linux.

So they it's going to be hard, but how are they going to react is going to be very interesting to see.

It's going to also be very interesting to see the prices of these because these come out next year, early next year.

So we will see probably in the coming months what the prices will actually be.

If they are affordable and if they are really priced very competitively, they will win.

If they are expensive, it will not go very well for them.

Are you excited for all the Steam hardware that has come out?

Excited to see what they're actually going to price?

This let me know in the comments below.

But thank you for listening to this podcast.

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All right guys, stay safe.

Get to gaming wherever you want to gaming, playing the games that you want to play and see you next week later.