Russia is going to develop its own game console!

[thewayne]

To hell with those decadent Westerners and their XBoxes and PlayStations and their LGBTQ propaganda! We're going to go with solid Russian craftsmanship and story-telling!

Now, I have absolutely no doubt that Russian game developers could create some truly compelling stories. Every nation has great story-tellers. And there's no doubt that they have great programmers, though far too many are involved in cybercrime. I think their goal of producing such a console by a '26-'27 deadline is perhaps overly ambitious, but hey, what do I know?

https://gamerant.com/russia-gaming-consoles/

The Slashdot comments are amusing:
https://games.slashdot.org/story/24/03/29/2244215/russia-is-making-its-own-gaming-consoles


Oh! I know what I know! Russian chip foundries are foundering with a chip packaging defect rate of 50%! And that's PACKAGING the chips, not MAKING them. The Chinese are making the chips, sending them to Russia for PACKAGING. So the Russians are receiving discs (I assume) that contain hundreds of chips that have to be precisely cut up, then packaged into housings with leads attached for later integration into circuit boards and such for use in various electronic devices.

Except they can't reliably, in large batches. Apparently they can do small batches okay, but large batches are beyond their ability.

The problem seems to be quality control, calibration of the devices, and workforce skill set.

Clearly first-world problems.

Oh, I forgot. Russia isn't a first-world nation. Except they have nukes, and a seemingly nutso war-monger leader. There are lots of brilliant scientists and engineers in Russia, and I feel sorry for them living in such constraints. We've had several Russian astronomers who've worked at the observatory, and I've worked with Russian programmers before. Brilliant people, once you figure out how to work with the language barriers.

This is why I mourned the turn they took when the nutjob former KGB station chief became the leader. I knew he'd never let go. They had a chance of turning around Russia when the USSR fell apart, they had a chance of becoming a free nation and elevating themselves, but then the criminal class took over and it became a kleptocracy, and it's now a mess.

I really can't see things improving until there's another October Revolution and the people literally seize the state again, which will be a massive bloodbath. Maybe they can start over, maybe the criminal class will simply seize power again.

It's a little unclear as to whether these chips are strictly consumer-grade or intended possibly for military use. A lot of military applications don't need anything much more sophisticated than an 8088, but when you're talking drones or night vision goggles, you're needing much later chips and packaging.

https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/half-of-russian-made-chips-are-defective-baikal-struggles-to-meet-russias-demand

Comments

[garote]

Well, Pakistan has nukes, and 2/5 more people in it than Russia (250 million), and we’ve been in a proxy war with them…. but Pakistan is considered “third world”, and has more religious oppression than even Russia. So are we holding Russia to a different standard?

[armiphlage]

The factory I work in has a cleanroom that packages bare dies straight from the wafer. It's far less complicated than the processing required for the wafer itself, but it does require a lot of attention to detail.

[lovelyangel]

Maybe Russia should go back to those Apple II knockoffs they used to make.

[disneydream06]

We, the LGBT community, is always right there to shoulder the blame for everything.
LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hugs, Jon

[gingeriana]

and don't forget Ru_net Cheburashka!
developed to replace Internet with its endless homo threats :)

[devilc]

About Russian quality control ... I am not surprised.

As the Cold War (pt 1) wound down, my Uncle Rich (3 Star General) got to talk with one of his Russian counterparts, who had some questions about American logistics. USAF was not Uncle Rich's specialty, but he talked that yeah, the USAF transport aircraft have very reliable engines, made to high standards.

Not so much for Mother Russia. A four engine plane was actually a 12 engine plane. 1 engine in the plane, 1 engine going to/coming from the factory, 1 engine in the factory undergoing a rebuild.

[silveradept]

An interesting decision to sink resources into. If they're worried about queer content coming in on video games, they can choose to hang out in as many of the toxic spaces of shooters and fighting games as they like and be completely assured that there's more than enough queerphobia to go all around the world and then some.

I didn't find the Slashdot comments particularly insightful or funny, and many of them seemed to want to wage war about whether or not queer content is propaganda, or whether we're being fed propaganda about how well the invasion and/or defense of Ukraine is going. I'm sure, given time, the comment section will find their way to making fun of the venture in more tech-snarky ways, but when I looked, it wasn't a great crop of good things.

Of course, that whole chip packaging problem will also make it difficult to develop a decent console and proper games for it as well.