Russia Is Making Its Own Gaming Consoles - Slashdot
source link: https://games.slashdot.org/story/24/03/29/2244215/russia-is-making-its-own-gaming-consoles
Go to the source link to view the article. You can view the picture content, updated content and better typesetting reading experience. If the link is broken, please click the button below to view the snapshot at that time.
Russia Is Making Its Own Gaming Consoles
Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!
binspamdupenotthebestofftopicslownewsdaystalestupid freshfunnyinsightfulinterestingmaybe offtopicflamebaittrollredundantoverrated insightfulinterestinginformativefunnyunderrated descriptive typodupeerror
Do you develop on GitHub? You can keep using GitHub but automatically sync your GitHub releases to SourceForge quickly and easily with this tool so your projects have a backup location, and get your project in front of SourceForge's nearly 20 million monthly users. It takes less than a minute. Get new users downloading your project releases today!
Russia Is Making Its Own Gaming Consoles (gamerant.com) 101
Posted by BeauHD
on Saturday March 30, 2024 @06:00AM from the work-cut-out-for-them dept.Following a meeting on the economic development of Kaliningrad, Putin requested government officials to research the requirements for domestic production of stationary and portable gaming consoles. The Russian president also ordered the planning of an appropriate operating system and cloud system for the consoles. The deadline for these plans is set for June 15, 2024, and Russia's prime minister was designated as the official overseeing these tasks. A Kremlin spokesperson confirmed that the orders intend to develop Russia's homegrown gaming industry.
-
›
16bits, perchance?-
by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Saturday March 30, 2024 @06:35AM (#64355726)
Is gonna be 14 bits.
2 bits curiously vanished during production. Also, factory boss now has new datcha.
-
8-bit, copy of the old Soviet ones. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
-
-
-
With an "appropriate operating system". Presumably not Windows (Russians are afraid of those). Is there a version of Linux whose mascot is a Polonium Penguin?
-
Thanks for trying.
-
-
-
You not own Tetris. Tetris now owns YOU!
-
Considering Russia can't get a 50% yield on chips using an ancient 28 nm process, obviously they won't be using any Russian-made hardware in it.
-
Russia can make "its own gaming consoles" from chips manufactured by China just as much as the US makes "its own gaming consoles" from chips manufactured in China or Taiwan. Whom the video games promote in terms of propaganda depends on the makers of the games, not on the chip manufacturers.
-
Yeah, there's always SMIC. Plus they have Elbrus in Russia, so hey why not?
-
Russia can make "its own gaming consoles" from chips manufactured by China just as much as the US makes "its own gaming consoles" from chips manufactured in China or Taiwan.
Lol wut. Taiwan? Taiwan is very much aligned with the West's ideas that it's not OK for a larger neighboring country to invade you just because they want your land for their own and don't believe you have a right to exist as a separate entity, and insist that you have always belonged them even if you don't realize that.
Can't imagine why Taiwan is so invested in that particular status quo...
-
Taiwan LIKES the status quo, and so does China. Taiwanese exports to China are 28% of its trade, with another 14% going to Hong Kong, and the US coming in just under Hong Kong's number. They'll make a lot of noise for free USD, but in the end the oligarchs which actually run the country have no intention of rocking the boat.
-
Taiwan LIKES the status quo,
Yeah no shit.
and so does China.
No it does not. The PRC believes that Taiwan is it's land to conquer an rule. China is happy with the old world order of empires conquering their neighbors for land since they have a few placed they want to conquer and are one of the big boys.
-
From the perspective of the People's Republic of China, Taiwan is a Chinese province. And Beijing is the capital if China.
From the perspective of the Republic of China, Taiwan is a Chinese province, and Taipeh is the capital of China.
China (either one) is not in the business of conquest. China hasn't been an empire for a while now, and even when they were, they didn't have colonies or conquer their neighbours. They were conquered by their neighbours a few times, and every time the conquerors became Chine
-
even when they were, they didn't have colonies or conquer their neighbours.
I'd disagree with that last bit, at different times China has encompassed Myanmar, a good chunk of Southeast Asia, most of the Korean peninsula, and well into the middle of Central Asia. You're right otherwise, they learned their lesson centuries ago, trade is much more stable and less expensive to maintain than being an occupier. They did have trading colonies in the Indian Ocean, as far away as Ethiopia and possibly Zimbabwe, but
-
They are not opposed to being the occupier as they currently are in Tibet and Hong Kong. They currently donâ(TM)t have a sophisticated enough army due to their poor internal governance between 1950 and 2000. Just like Russia, they have the bodies but not the technology which is why they want Taiwan.
-
Hong Kong is not occupied. It used to be occupied, by the British, but that was a quarter of a century ago. After the Opium Wars, China traded Hong Kong to the British Empire, there was a contract that it would be given back. And it was.
Hong Kong is a special economic zone, like Guangzhou and Shenzen, but unlike those Hong Kong also has its own currency. Much like Taiwan.
Tibet was conquered, that's true, and subsequently slavery was ended there. Most people would see that as a good thing. Tibet might
-
-
-
From the perspective of the PRC, Taiwan, an island that the PRC had never in it's entire history had dominion over is theirs to seize and rule.
The PRC has never ruled Taiwan and has made threats.
When you meet in the middle between and absurd position and a sensible one, you adopt an absurd position
-
No, from their perspective they don't need to seize it, they already have it.
Why did Chiang Kai-Shek go to Taiwan?
Beijing did make noises that they are not pleased about the recent election results in Taiwan; it would have been surprising if they hadn't.
-
No, from their perspective they don't need to seize it, they already have it.
Much like Putin and Ukraine. Which is why they are not against overturning the current order of countries not generally annexing each other, because they wish to be able to seize it by force. And the PRC know full well that it's laws have never been part of PRC and so force would very much be needed.
Their perspective is that they have it only in as much as it's their right to take it with military force if they wish. No one high up
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
50% yield is still more than nothing.
-
-
We just learned [slashdot.org] that they even admit that half of their chip production is duds. And if they admit that, it usually means that most of the rest is trash, too. And they're trying to build high tech weapons for their ridiculous war. What for is a mystery to me since they only use it for terror attacks instead of supporting their front line soldiers with it, but hey, who am I to question the military genius in the Kremlin?
I have a hunch that these consoles will be as available as cars were in Soviet times. In other words, yeah, we'll see them being produced and presented, but curiously nobody will have one and wait times and scalping will reach levels that PS5 scalpers dreamed of.
-
I expect that the console will be a cheap clone of the Switch running a fork of Red Star OS with an Android compatibility layer and an exclusive marketplace for government-approved apps. But which games will they have? Russian game studios probably need some government "stimulus" to pivot to developing for their home market.
When I asked GPT for some Russian game studios, it replied with this list of major Russian game developers whose games show exactly the kind of dystopian world the Russian government wan
-
Russian game makers are obsessed with dystopias, I guess it is their fascination with the exotic and foreign.
A Dalvik VM for desktop Linux? Yes, please! I have been looking for ways of running Android apps on the desktop other than QEmu.
-
-
As ffkom posted above, there's nothing stopping them from using SMIC, except maybe China itself.
-
Yeah their hardward sucks, but the real problem is software:
The Russian president also ordered the planning of an appropriate operating system and cloud system for the consoles.
I see two possibilities:
a) It's a homegrown Linux distro [wikipedia.org] with a Steam install and hope the sanctions are gone by the time it's ready to ship because it sounds like it's hard (not impossible) to buy games now.
b) He actually has them build their own cloud and software stack and they end up with an eco-system consisting of a handful of-
You know, there's a lot of Google gaming consoles sitting around somewhere....
-
You think it's going to be a Steam Box clone using something other than Arch?
I'd rather expect they'd use a proper package manager instead of Steam. The Steam client isn't even available for arm64. Plus, it says they want to use their own clout^Hd.
-
-
That's assuming the "Russian console" will even be manufactured in Russia. My feeling is they'll order a few thousand no-name consoles from China, put a "ZBox" or similar label on them and show them on TV as proof that Russian industry thrives and can equal or even better western technology.
-
-
One of the main problems of bureaucracy disconnected from reality but feeling desperate need to please the strongman above them is that they don't care about the problem. They only care how they think strongman above them sees the problem.
This results in hilarious misses like these. In reality, all Russia actually needs to do to avoid alphabet problems is the institute legal framework toward it that many countries already have. All the rainbow virtue signalling in games is replaced with normal things in many locales already. I.e. game makers don't even need to make any significant changes. They just give you a version that is meant for places like Middle East.
-
This is not about LGBT issues. This is about controlling a medium.
Russia has a pretty tight grip on what information their people can access. Computer games are among the few media that can still enter the country and tell of a world outside of Russia. Please also understand that internet connections are not as omnipresent there as they're here. Yes, in Moscow and Petersburg, but as soon as you move outside those large centers of population, access to what could be considered an "outside world" is spotty at best. Computer games are some of the few media that are not under control by the Russian government that can reach people in those areas.
-
Case in point: Minecraft Library [ign.com].
-
No, this is about alphabet propaganda. Russia has very little grip on what information populace can access, because everyone has a smartphone and everyone uses Telegram. And Telegram has proper discovery mechanisms for things that might interest you in your language.
That's why there's a metric shit ton of Ukrainian milbloggers who blog in their native Russian and have massive Russian audiences. Trolling wars between Russian and Ukrainian milbloggers are utterly hilarious.
Russia is religious however, and their two main religions are Orthodox Christianity and Sunni Islam. Both are very deeply steeped in tradition and both are very much against alphabet propagandising of their believers. Meanwhile Russia was among the leading nations in decriminalizing homosexuality and most people who aren't deeply religious don't care that much. But a very large portion of Russians are religious and while they will tolerate alphabet people, they will not tolerate their propaganda.
And modern alphabet messaging in mass media is indeed propaganda. Just open a twitter of many of those organisations like the currently trending Sweet Baby and Black Girl Gamers. They are explicit about the fact that their long term goal is to propagandize general populace to their ideological side. That's why they're starting to get pushback even in the West from people who would like to not have political extremist propaganda in their entertainment.
-
Ugh telegram..l get my propaganda off YouTube where every single day is another Ukrainian victory. If they win a small skirmish it is a huge step on the way to the kremlin and if they are forced into a wide scale retreat it is just cleverly drawing the Russians into a trap.
-
That's only if you watch in languages foreign to the war.
Russian language youtube is interesting because both Ukrainians and Russians primarily post in that language. And while youtube did ban a lot of "Russia will defeat the West and Ukraine, URAAA!" accounts at the start of the war, most of the more thoughtful Russian milbloggers still run theirs, and they're still on youtube.
Though in most cases, it's just a bit more self-censored version of their content on Telegram. And obviously Ukrainian milbloggers
-
Unfortunately I don't speak Russian or Ukrainian so not an option for me but it's interesting to know, thanks.
What's the channel you were referring to? I think you typoed out the channel name in an autocorrect or something. The one you said has all the videos. Thanks!
-
-
-
Truth. Of course they get pushback. Because the lunatic left doesn't know when or where to stop.
But being an equal opportunity jerk, I'm happy to give kooks the skewer, the far right now has their own bible, courtesy of the Son of Man, the Christ - their cult leader. 60 some dollars, the proceeds to pay off his sexual assault and espionage lawyers. That's a different subject though. Not whataboutism, just that there is plenty of not quite sane stuff to go around.
Meanwhile, most of us don't actually c
-
-
You think that's hilarious ask him for his take on vegans. Talk about world view driven by hard right culture war nonsense.
-
Isn't having to ask someone for their opinion on vegans a mark of goodness?
You need only compare it to vegans who do not need to be asked for their opinion on veganism. They'll tell you regardless.
-
-
-
-
They are explicit about the fact that their long term goal is to propagandize general populace to their ideological side. That's why they're starting to get pushback even in the West from people who would like to not have political extremist propaganda in their entertainment.
Your "waah they're propagandizing, this is alphabet propaganda" reminds me that trash like you called my family "uppity negroes" in the 60s for wanting voting rights too.
Why don't you shove your burning cross way up your inbred ass
-
Oh they still do that too, just not when they think it will come back to bite them in the ass.
-
-
There's also another angle: Remember back in the early 2000s? When ISIS was Teh Evilz? It didn't even take a year before the gaming world was flooded with games where your job was to gun down those evil terrists.
Now, this time it's not "us" that got attacked. So there is a considerable delay because, well, it's not as much of an ad platform as back when "we" were the target. Buuuuuut... on the other hand... there is game devs like Destructive Creations. A Polish game studio responsible for Hatred and, if th
-
Uh WTF? "Alphabet people" are not propagandizing. It seems to me its the religions who do the propagandizing, grooming, and brainwashing. You don't see kids getting sent to gay school, but you sure do see a ton of them being sent to religious indoctrination camps AKA Sunday School.
-
-
Who really says "we're coming for your children?" Oh right. The Jesuits [sourcenews.scot].
-
-
-
You really need to watch the DS9 episode "Far Beyond the Stars". Might give you a little insight to why LGBTQ+ folks who work in creative industries want to see themselves reflected in their work.
"You can't make the captain black" is just today's "You can't make the captain gay"
-
Your *-ism is showing.
-
-
You do know that because YouTube are not allowed to do business in Russia anymore, everyone in Russia has YouTube Premium for free, right?
Can you still get Russia Today?
Who is being isolated from the outside world here?
-
Youtube is not banned yet only because their russian equivalent sucks donkey balls. As soon as they think it is good enough, youtube will immediately be banned. They consided instagram a terrorist organisation, for fuck's sake!
-
The fact of the matter is that American media are not banned in Russia, while Russian media are banned in the USA.
-
-
Yes, I can still get RT by simply visiting its website. And so can everyone else in the West.
-
Sure I get RT. Though I have to admit, I'm not really sure if it's the real RT, most of what they produce reads a lot like I'm reading The Onion.
-
-
-
-
There are usually mods that allow you to enable Middle East mode in many popular games.
These mods have been so popular lately that progressive mod sites like NexusMods banned them. This is notably the same site that also serves mods for enabling the Western mode for Middle Easterners, and continues to host these.
-
do you have link to a site that hosts these popular islamized mods that NexusMods banned?
-
To my knowledge, you have to get them from modder's own channels now. Usually their github/patreon/subscribestar/etc.
-
-
-
> how can I order the Middle-East versions for my kids?
It's called the MAGA version here.
-
If I were a parent, I'd prefer that my kids learn to be accepting of LGBTQ+ folks rather than how to build IEDs, but you do you.
-
Move to Saudi Arabia.
-
-
-
>Which kind of makes one wonder why the US electorate wants a strongman above them.
US electorate is so averse to having a strongman above them, that they haven't even implemented a centralized property registration system like most of the rest of the world. You know, the latest brouhaha about squatters getting owners arrested in NYC?
Most of the "more liberal" Western nations have a centralized government registry for property, which makes squatters rights dead letter of the law. But US peoples are so str
-
-
The far-right is craving a theocrat of late. They see Trump as their best current shot at it in terms of election odds, but even if Trump got abducted by a UFO and flown to the Andromeda Galaxy one-way*, it's possible somebody else would step into that spot. MTG might, but she lacks Don's charisma.
* That would be sooo nice.
-
-
-
-
All the rainbow virtue signalling in games is replaced with normal things in many locales already.
Re: "normal things", you yourself are virtual-signaling religious beliefs there. Fuck the talibanjelicals' hate.
-
-
by quonset ( 4839537 ) on Saturday March 30, 2024 @06:50AM (#64355750)
The government has to be directed to develop a means to produce a gaming console, not the private sector. With what technology is unknown considering they don't have enough chips to use in the missiles they're sending against Ukraine.
It's almost as if in a desparate attempt to keep the focus off the over 400,000 dead and wounded Russians the drunk muscovite midget is trying to distract the population.
Hans Kristian Graebener = StoneToss
-
Anyone getting a higher score than Putin gets a life-long, no-expenses paid trip to a gulag.
-
-
I appreciate the attempt to revive the Sokolow meme, but Russia hasn't been a soviet republic for over thirty years now.
-
-
Glorious policeman Commune farm simulator KGB Snitch III LGBTQ appocalypse Oligarch transport manager Deny everything deluxe: Chernobyl edition
-
How many votes did the Communist Party of Russian Federation get at the recent election?
-
-
... he's rejecting euro/american hegemony and their colonial culture in favor of local traditions?
I thought that was a good thing to you folks?
-
Untill you realize that maybe, just maybe.... that hegeminy is not the worst thing that can happen to humanity.
-
Depends on who the hegemon is, I suppose. The corporate-owned US seems to be doing a really shitty job of it.
-
-
Russia has no interest in owning the world, they have quite enough work managing the largest and most resource-rich country in the world already. The last time they had a colony was Alaska.
-
-
And your evidence to the contrary is . . .
Oh, that's right, there is none.
-
-
-
-
-
-
Who are "you folks"?
Oh yeah you're a fuckwit with an utterly binary view of the world. If people don't subscibe to your brand of crazy, they must by your thinking subscribe in whole to the random mishmash of disconnected philosophy which is the polar opposite of whatever's in your head today.
-
Yeah, he should totally do that.
More competition in the console gaming market would be a good thing!Now, is that going to lead to the Russian people being exposed to less western games? I highly doubt it; because they aren't hard to get. And probably you also need to reduce exposure to Japanese games, because they represent diversity, especially in sexual orientation about as much as western games.
-
-
Seems like the return of crappy copies of "capitalist" products. What's next, no more Bananas?
-
Russia's military is scary not because it's any good, but because it's absolutely massive, the people giving the orders don't seem to care how many soldiers die to achieve a goal, and the rest of the world is worried maybe a few of their ICBMs still work despite most likely having been neglected to the point of uselessness.
From pretty much the moment the second phase of the invasion of Ukraine started, we saw how laughably BAD the Russian military actually is (excluding the aforementioned availability of me
-
Russia's military has barely enough soldiers to guard their border, the longest in the world. It is not the 20th century anymore.
The rest of the world is not worried about Russian ICBMs. Not because Russia would have neglected their arsenal (unemployment is high, and nuclear weapons maintenance provides jobs), but because nukes are tactically useless.
The kleptocracy has also been a myth after Medwedev. You don't hear about Mafiya anymore. You now hear about "oligarchs" who are not actually the governmen
-
Russia's military has enough soldiers to be both inept AND gaining ground in Ukraine. And if Ukraine can't ramp up their internal arms industry - and I don't believe they can - a lack of Western support will result in them being overrun by Russian forces. Again, Russia has a numerical advantage but not a quality advantage. If they had both, Ukraine would already be part of Russia.
The kleptocracy is not a myth. Putin is the king of the kleptocrats, which is why he is so ridiculously wealthy. And 'oligar
-
The Ukraine has four million soldiers, and they have the home advantage. Russia could only spare a few hundred thousand to send to the Ukraine. That's the numbers.
McKinsey had convinced Russia to outsource their weapons manufacturing to the Ukraine in the early 2000s, and they did, so most Russian weaponry is made in Ukraine. Russia has only recently begun to restore its heavy industry. For reasons that should be obvious.
I don't know what is going on exactly, the truth is always the first casualty of wa
-
-
-
True. The army may be inept, and we saw that in the initial invasion of Ukraine, but they made good headway because they had tons and tons of cannon fodder. Recruitment from the prisons was to get more cannon fodder. The reason Prigozhin attempted a coup was because his Wagner group was being used as cannon fodder.
-
-
Even if the history of Russian 'import substitution' weren't littered with farces where someone gets a gold star for domestically producing tractors...from imported Polish kits with the serial numbers filed off...or the like; "game console" seems like a strikingly hard target, especially relative to its value.
It's a consumer product, rather than the state or state owned or heavily influenced companies being the customer, so there's a lot less leverage in terms of just making 'domestically produced' patri-
This is from a country where the terrorist acts are planned by the state.
How do you think Putin got in power in the first place? That building didn't blow itself up in 1999
-
-
Why bother with making game consoles in this day and age? Technically they are no different from home computers anyway, which can be as easy to use for gaming, but offer more flexibility.
-
Look at all Biden did for Russia. He is Putin's puppet in sheep's clothing. After all the war money spent in Ukraine, the "sanctions", and rhetoric about Putim being Hitler (which Biden is funding a real Hitler in the making, in charge or Isreal, which the UN/ICJ admits is enacting a REAL genocide paid for by the U.S.). He made Russia's economy stronger, they get more money from oil, and they are now in a war footing more than any western countries. Good job Joe Blow! (This is not an ad for Trump, who I hav
-
Not content with controlling the media, they even want to control the games their citizens play.
-
I don't think Russia, alone, can succeed. There's simply not enough games in Russia for this to make sense from a $$$ point of view.
However, if Russia would partner together with China and India (for technology and marketshare) and a few South American countries (marketshare), they definitely would have high chances of succeeding.
Recommend
About Joyk
Aggregate valuable and interesting links.
Joyk means Joy of geeK