Having a popular, standardized pc with fixed hardware and OS would enable game developers to aim that as minimum(or recommended) requirement and to optimize their games for that. And since it will be running linux, this means that gaming in linux would become even more mainstream and better supported too.

Did people think that this would be the case? The gap between the 4080 and the 4090 is huge. Basically all non xx90 cards are heavily lobotomized.

The 5080 will be half the card the 5090 is and the 5090 is 30% faster than the 4090. I expect the 5080 to land in the middle between 4080 and the 4090, maybe 25% faster than the 4080.