Less than a year after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his government to develop a gaming console, officials involved in the process said they had no idea their device would rival the likes of PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo. He reportedly admitted that he couldn’t do it. Tech spot. One of the devices has Russia’s own Elbrus processor, but it’s not very powerful. The other appears to be a Fire Stick knockoff that lets you stream games from the cloud, but costs $45.
“I hope that our colleagues will approach this task with full responsibility and come up with something truly groundbreaking,” Anton Gorelkin, deputy chairman of the State Duma Russian Information Policy Committee, wrote on Telegram. .
“The Elbrus processor is not yet at a stage of development that guarantees equal competition with PS5 and Xbox, which means the solution will have to be non-standard,” he added.
Gorelkin pointed out that Russian gaming consoles were not developed to allow players to simply port old games over. Instead, he hoped the new console would promote and popularize domestic video game products and industry.
internet reaction
Reacting to Moscow’s attempt to compete with the gaming giant, social media users mocked Putin and expressed surprise.
“I remember hearing Russia say they were going to make their own game consoles. Actually, I didn’t think they would follow,” one user said, while another joked , “Poutine will be a wild collector’s item in a few decades.” ”
A third said: “Even more so when you consider that Russian tech companies didn’t just say ‘we can totally do that’, but rather that President Putin issued a government order to develop a Russian gaming console.” It’s interesting,” he commented.
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President Putin orders development
In March last year, after a conference on the socio-economic development of the Kaliningrad region, President Putin issued a directive to devise a gaming console in addition to “a special operating system and cloud system for distributing games and programs to users.” did. According to a report from RT.
Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin had been designated to oversee the completion of the task, which had a deadline of June 15, 2024.
Russia’s president was forced to order the development after major video game manufacturers such as Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo stopped official sales to Russia in the wake of the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
