thewayne: (Default)
[personal profile] 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

May 2025

S M T W T F S
    1 23
45678910
1112 131415 1617
18 19 20 212223 24
25262728 293031

Most Popular Tags

Page Summary

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated May. 30th, 2025 08:55 am
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios