Russia's government investigating creating own game consoles and delivery platform

[Delicieuxz]

Putin's ordered his government to look into creating Russia's own Steam Deck, SteamOS, and basically Steam itself

The deadline for this consideration is June 15th of this year, and that honestly doesn't give them a lot of time to come up with anything other than: "Sir, it's going to be tough. But if we just copy Valve and create a seminal work of PC gaming brilliance first, the rest ought to fall into place."

Kommersant, a Russian-language newspaper, has investigated how feasible it is itself, and has spoken to industry figures, including the product director at Lesta Games, the company running the World of Tanks clone in the region. They're thinking basically comes down to the same, stating that creating a whole system from scratch could take 5 - 10 years and still end up some 15 years behind other systems from a technical point of view.

It will be interesting to see the conclusion the Russian government comes to, but given that this is essentially coming off the back of the starting up of silicon production at the Enkor plant in Chernyakhovsk, Kaliningrad, it all feels part of a push to domesticate the country's technology sector.

The plant is estimated to be able to produce 200 million silicon wafers annually, primarily to be part of Russia's push for its own solar cells. But that's a lot of wafers (though I couldn't find out at what size) and maybe there's some consideration about what else it can do with that abundance of silicon.

The government instruction Google-translated from http://kremlin.ru/events/president/news/73305

I'm curious to see what people think about the actual timeframes it might take Russia to do some of this stuff. I don't believe it would take that long for Russia just to create its own content-delivery platform for gaming, as Russia already has those for other things. For an OS, Russia could make a Linux distro tailored to gaming and could follow China's example with its Harmony OS, starting from an existing OS platform and working on it until its ready to completely break-off into its own thing.


Just as they did with China, sanctions on Russia have already been spurring major domestic business growth in Russia, with the Russian government making a concerted effort to make the country self-sufficient in as much as possible. And, in general, Russia is having a large amount of success in its efforts.

When it comes to video games, various Western platforms have stopped sales in Russia, including GoG, Epic, Microsoft, and previously Activision Blizzard (now also owned by Microsoft), while various Western payment services, including Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and PayPal, have suspended their international operation with Russia, limiting the ways Russians can buy games from other Western platforms that use those services. I suspect that's the instigator of the idea that for Russia create its own gaming platforms and services, though I think there could be additional reasons for the goal, including depriving the West from being able to gather data on Russians' online, spending, and entertainment habits, and creating a visible Russian presence and influence in the global market, as a soft-power tool.


As the PC Gamer article says, Russia and China could help each other by offering things they each have and the other can use in their independence drives. And with its domestic chip, OS, mobile phone and apps, and EV production, China has already shown that sanctions are best taken as an opportunity to replace and innovate. I recently saw a quote of Elon Musk from long ago, mocking the idea that China could ever competently compete in electric vehicles, compared to him today warning that China will demolish EV rivals unless the US imposes trade restrictions.

 

[pendragon1]

ummm, what the fuckitty fuck? before soapbox move.
sure why not? they made tetris...

 

[DWolvin]

... on someone else's console.

 

[pendragon1]

... on someone else's console.

computer

 

[socK]

Haha good luck.

Bonus points if they ship something that's low key designed to make you better at flying drones.

I'm sure sending some of the best and brightest to get mulched won't impact this timeline either

 

[1337Goat]

Russian government in charge of the games. Wow that sure sounds fun for gamers.

 

[Markus Guitarus]

Putin is well aware of the West's soft power, which dwarfs even their hard power. Russians love Western games, movies, and music. This is a desperate bid to sequester Russia's youth from the West.

 

[Red Falcon]

ummm, what the fuckitty fuck? before soapbox move.
sure why not? they made tetris...

One innovative guy who happened to be Russian made Tetris, everyone else in Russia just tried to profit off of the poor bastard.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fQtxKmgJC8

And with its domestic chip, OS, mobile phone and apps, and EV production, China has already shown that sanctions are best taken as an opportunity to replace and innovate.

Editing my post since this is far more political than technical, and there is no sense arguing with posts filled with propaganda.
See you in Soapbox, comrade.

 

[emphy]

Russia is perfectly capable of setting up a national console + infrastructure, I'm sure.

A credible games industry capable of providing quality content, though, would be a different matter altogether.

 

[Okatis]

LMAO, please don't believe every piece of propaganda published.

The thing one has to keep in mind about those two is their goal is generally proving a counter perspective to various mainstream Western news fearmongering or direct from China propaganda. They literally styled their China Show after No Agenda in this regard, along with the donations, callbacks and soundbites.

However because of that motivation they'll usually promote the stances they always have and only focus on the examples that support that view, since their audience expects a perspective from them contrary to what is in the news, just like NA (ie: there's nothing much to discuss and the audience to care if they're agreeing with news that's out there). In their case: repeatedly referring to examples of incompetent/harmful local and sometimes state government actions, either from experience or in the news, along with poorly produced official state media propaganda as reasons to not be concerned about China's big talk.

Two things can be true at once though: various actions which are dumb/paper tigers/etc and various things occurring which don't get coverage from them (since it doesn't fit the typical mold) that China is doing well that should be paid attention to. Example: they often mock ridiculous state propaganda videos showing 'AI' from state media that's poorly made and/or just based on commonly available Western-made tools, yet if you actually look at various neural network research that's coming out from there (in fields I've come across: super resolution, synthetic voice) it can be top notch and even at the forefront.

By omitting such examples, either as they're unaware or it's inconvenient, the audience is left with the impression nothing China does is quality—even within the areas they cover on the show, so pay no mind to them. Which just isn't accurate and I think misleading, even if they might mean well.

 

[pendragon1]

One innovative guy who happened to be Russian made Tetris, everyone else in Russia just tried to profit off of the poor bastard.

thanks, tips...
was a joke to begin with.

 

[toast0]

Plenty of history of famiclones in Russia. But modern consoles are pretty much computers or smart phones. If they can make a domestic computerphone, then it's just about pirating or cloning popular games to run on the thing. Of course, it's nice if there's domestic creation of completely new games too, but that's not strictly needed?

 

[philb2]

Back in the day, the Russians copied the IBM 360 mainframe computers.

 

[Delicieuxz]

Russian government in charge of the games. Wow that sure sounds fun for gamers.

I don't think that's the plan, and that it's more like the government wants to get Russian companies working on infrastructure for those things. If they can produce a Russian game delivery platform, Western and other publishers can then directly choose to list their games on them, rather than be cut-out of the Russian market because a particular platform or payment service chooses to not do business in Russia.

Here's why this statement is total bullshit:



LMAO, please don't believe every piece of propaganda published.

I'll take TechInsights analysis over clickbait FUD videos that fly in the face of the actual data any day, so back at you.

Two things can be true at once though: various actions which are dumb/paper tigers/etc and various things occurring which don't get coverage from them (since it doesn't fit the typical mold) that China is doing well that should be paid attention to. Example: they often mock ridiculous state propaganda videos showing 'AI' from state media that's poorly made and/or just based on commonly available Western-made tools, yet if you actually look at various neural network research that's coming out from there (in fields I've come across: super resolution, synthetic voice) it can be top notch and even at the forefront.

By omitting such examples, either as they're unaware or it's inconvenient, the audience is left with the impression nothing China does is quality—even within the areas they cover on the show, so pay no mind to them. Which just isn't accurate and I think misleading, even if they might mean well.

I've seen it said by those who have things made in China that China simply builds to whatever specification people want. If someone wants to build a product cheaply, using low-quality materials, Chinese factories will do that. And if someone wants to build a product to a high standard, resulting in it costing a lot more to build, China will do that, too. But a lot of production is done in China precisely to keep costs lower.

Everything regarding China's own chipmaking and OS development was mercilessly mocked along the way, including while they were making their leaps and bounds. The sneering, hyper-cynical information environment hasn't had its intended effect, as China now leads, well, basically everywhere. And it has probably helped China as energy that's spent making and feeding-off hysterical FUD is energy that isn't being spent actually competing, and it lowers the intellectual level of an audience and makes them less capable to compete, thus clearing the way for China and others to move ahead.

An ASPI report from September 2023 said that China now leads in 80% of advanced and critical technology.

 

[flegg]

Business Insider is not much more than a clickbait machine. It's easy but ultimately foolish to lump Russia and China together just because of similarities in their governments and history of communism. There are a lot of cultural differences. Russia has 1/10th the population of China and has effectively been brain drained by the US and Israel over the last half century - additionally with the breakup of the USSR losing innovative areas. Russian economy depends heavily on natural resources, with space and nuclear tech being on their last embers compared to the rest of the world. From one perspective it's actually kind of astounding how relatively poor Russia is compared to places like UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia. Yes, China killed a lot of their upper class back in the day and chased more away to an island (Taiwan), but their demographics have been recovering in that regard (one child policy different kind of animal). So the idea that Russia can just "do what China do" is pretty far fetched to me. With China it's easy to get sucked into absolutes/ black and white view points. The reality of China is in the middle of the extreme views everyone has about them.

 

[philb2]

Business Insider is not much more than a clickbait machine. It's easy but ultimately foolish to lump Russia and China together just because of similarities in their governments and history of communism. There are a lot of cultural differences. Russia has 1/10th the population of China and has effectively been brain drained by the US and Israel over the last half century - additionally with the breakup of the USSR losing innovative areas. Russian economy depends heavily on natural resources, with space and nuclear tech being on their last embers compared to the rest of the world. From one perspective it's actually kind of astounding how relatively poor Russia is compared to places like UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia. Yes, China killed a lot of their upper class back in the day and chased more away to an island (Taiwan), but their demographics have been recovering in that regard (one child policy different kind of animal). So the idea that Russia can just "do what China do" is pretty far fetched to me. With China it's easy to get sucked into absolutes/ black and white view points. The reality of China is in the middle of the extreme views everyone has about them.

Guys,

Just a note here. FrgMstr has sent me warnings for postings with "political" content. As a result, I haven't commented on some of the posts in this thread, because I already have several warnings on my records. This is a great website and I don't want to get banned.

 

[GoldenTiger]

This really isn't tech news, it's something for soapbox.

 

[cdabc123]

Absolutely garbage news post. Go find the proper sub.

No news content has abunch of political memes trailing every propaganda post. Also stop posting screenshots, they are a garbage source of information. Especially with you spaming them.

Why support the severe restrictions other countries impose on their citizens and then criticize the west? Do you belive the internet is best when controlled by the ccp?

It would be cool to see if Russia can be bothered to develop games, fresh development from a unique perspective could result in some fun gaming for Russians. Comical to see how much tech is copied instead of innovated in Russia and China. So maybe they will just port whatever they can get their hands on. Which I'd support, digital plagiarism bairly matters.

 

[Red Falcon]

Back in the day, the Russians copied the IBM 360 mainframe computers.

About IBM, if we go even further back...

 

[DF-1]

in b4 the lock

 

[GoldenTiger]

The funny thing is, OP posts in soapbox. This is just an attention seeking joke of a thread in the wrong area .

 

[Delicieuxz]

This really isn't tech news, it's something for soapbox.

Because it concerns a country you don't want to hear something potentially positive about? If I posted that a US company was aiming to create new gaming platforms, or that some Western country was overcoming challenges to successfully grow their tech industry, would you still claim it isn't really tech news? Your assertion is overtly false.

The funny thing is, OP posts in soapbox. This is just an attention seeking joke of a thread in the wrong area .

Because when people post something that rubs your biases the wrong way they're just seeking attention.

I post political-focused topics in the soapbox forum. This topic is a news report regarding a tech endeavour. Hence, I posted it in the tech news forum. It seems to me that you're just wanting to make a sour fuss out of a personal bias for who the tech news relates to.

Absolutely garbage news post. Go find the proper sub.

No news content has abunch of political memes trailing every propaganda post. Also stop posting screenshots, they are a garbage source of information. Especially with you spaming them.

Why support the severe restrictions other countries impose on their citizens and then criticize the west? Do you belive the internet is best when controlled by the ccp?

Just saying something because it makes you feel good to say doesn't make it true. And what you said isn't true.

And who mentioned supporting restrictions on civilians? You're attacking a strawman by reacting to things that aren't even said.

I think if you were honest, you'd admit that you're applying an unspoken rule is that if literal tech news is about a geopolitical rival of the US, and it isn't plainly negative and derisive of the subject, then it's automatically smeared as "political" by some people to discuss it, just because it annoys them and they aren't mature enough to deal with it, and so opt to make a scene to get it removed or locked. And that's proven by you making the topic out to be about supporting restrictions on countries' citizens, and how much each country controls internet (something the US and West do, BTW) - ideas that weren't at all raised or even hinted at in anything I wrote. Ironically, your accusation of propaganda is you projecting, as you try to suppress factual information with unrelated, political histrionics. This is a very-immature troll's strategy for turning a thread they don't like into a dumpster fire: 1) Respond to a legitimate topic with snide, political-centric assertions about the subject. 2) When assertions you or others raised are confronted and corrected with evidence, say the thread is about politics and therefore not legitimate, when you were the ones determined to gravitate it there.

 

[Red Falcon]

TLDR of this thread:

 

[Lakados]

Russia currently has a heavy war time economy which works but can quickly turn south.
Entertainment industries are strong when they work, China, S.Korea, Japan, they heavily export culture as entertainment and it is all highly profitable. Hollywood, Bollywood, it’s a long multibillion dollar enterprise.
Russia needs a conversion plan to a consumer focused economy and investing now will save them great pain later.

 

[DPI]

TLDR of this thread:

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