Russia Admits Its Homegrown Consoles Can't Match the PS5 or Xbox Series (techspot.com) 52
Earlier this year, Russia President Vladimir Putin called on the government to develop its own domestically produced gaming consoles with proprietary operating systems and cloud-based platforms. "With Russia heavily sanctioned and looking to promote its own products, one of its in-development consoles is powered by the Elbrus processor," notes TechSpot. However, the processor is "designed primarily for domestic applications in critical infrastructure, defense, and other sensitive areas" and "can't match high-end CPUs from Intel, AMD, and Arm." From the report: The Russian government admits that this device isn't going to be on the same level as current-gen machines. "I hope my colleagues will approach this task with full responsibility and come up with something truly groundbreaking," said Anton Gorelkin, Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy. "It is obvious to everyone: Elbrus processors are not yet at the level required to compete equally with the PS5 and Xbox, which means the solution must be unconventional." Gorelkin said that Russian consoles aren't being designed only to play ports of hundreds of old, less-demanding games. He added that they should primarily serve the purpose of promoting and popularizing domestic video game products.
Another organization following Putin's instructions is Russian telecommunications firm MTS. Its console (above) will use the company's cloud-based gaming platform, called Fog Play. It allows owners of high-end PCs to rent out their computing power to those with less-powerful equipment, charging an hourly price. Those with more powerful PCs can access games on the service and use their own hardware to play them. MTS' device is expected to cost no more than $45 and come with an Xbox-like controller, suggesting it's unlikely to appeal to those who enjoy current-gen console games.
Another organization following Putin's instructions is Russian telecommunications firm MTS. Its console (above) will use the company's cloud-based gaming platform, called Fog Play. It allows owners of high-end PCs to rent out their computing power to those with less-powerful equipment, charging an hourly price. Those with more powerful PCs can access games on the service and use their own hardware to play them. MTS' device is expected to cost no more than $45 and come with an Xbox-like controller, suggesting it's unlikely to appeal to those who enjoy current-gen console games.
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Leon Theremin invented one of the most brilliant listening devices ever encountered. It was totally passive so it was only detected after being in operation for years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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"Remember these are the people that invented the Transformer, the Laser, Satellites, Nuclear Power Plants... Etc."
Ensign Pavel Chekov, is that you?
For the record, the transformer was invented by Nicholas Callan and Charles G. Page in Ireland and the US, the laser was invented by Theodore Maiman in the US.
Satellites and nuclear power plants I'll give you. (The Russians weren't the first to create a nuclear reactor that produced usable power, but Experimental Breeder Reactor I only produced power for four li
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"Remember these are the people that invented the Transformer, the Laser, Satellites, Nuclear Power Plants... Etc."
I thought Nicolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky [wikisource.org] was responsible for those.
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Some new version of Tetris?
Russian electronics on their own are fascinating. Their lithography always lagged behind the rest of the world and the yields were not good. They were cranking out germanium transistors right up until the soviet union collapsed. I do love browsing their unique semiconductors and electronic displays. Stuff like this
https://www.industrialalchemy.... [industrialalchemy.org]
https://www.industrialalchemy.... [industrialalchemy.org]
they have this fighter jet but you need to think i (Score:4, Funny)
they have this fighter jet but you need to think in Russian
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Yeah bud.. Russia will be fine and isn't regressing into a less classy soviet union.
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Those are really fun devices! thanks for the link.
Re:Imagine how awesome this world would be... (Score:4, Interesting)
That is a matter of opinion. "Elbrus" is the name of a mountain in Russia; several different CPUs have used the moniker. The current one is a VLIW (very long instruction word) design, though it can also execute x86 code with an emulation layer. As the name suggests, VLIW processors have huge instruction buses (8 words or more) that are dispatched simultaneously to computation elements. It's a bit like starting with the AVX instructions and then working backward to derive the rest of the architecture; for programs that frequently block, the design is ass-backwards.
This description also applies to a certain Western CPU architecture jointly developed by HP and Intel under the codename Merced, which you may know Itanium.
The VLIW paradigm originated in Russia and was considered a market disruptor at the same time as RISC. It also fell behind for the same reasons as RISC—namely that speculative execution got smarter as transistor density skyrocketed in the early 2000s—but also suffered as dedicated GPUs and faster L1 cache provided dedicated, discrete components to render the same benefits as a wide bus.
The Soviet Union never used domestic CPU designs widely, preferring instead to clone foreign chips and even whole machines. (Border countries like Hungary and Yugoslavia had slightly more success with esoteric home-grown designs like the Galaxsija computer, but this was fleeting, as Perestroika allowed cheap Commodores and PCs to flood the market just a few years later.) Modern Russia is handicapped by its inability to obtain the state-of-the-art lithography machines it would need to produce bootlegs of current CPUs.
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VLIW processors have huge instruction buses (8 words or more) that are dispatched simultaneously to computation elements. It's a bit like starting with the AVX instructions and then working backward to derive the rest of the architecture; for programs that frequently block, the design is ass-backwards.
This description also applies to a certain Western CPU architecture jointly developed by HP and Intel under the codename Merced, which you may know Itanium.
Some ATI/AMD GPUs also used a VLIW architecture: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
It's actually potentially awesome for creativity (Score:2)
What does Russia have to contribute to console development? Asking seriously.
Well, there have been a handful of good Russian games released relatively recently, they have more of a gaming culture than India, for example. However, what is potentially exciting is a parallel effort of Russian game designers to come up with unique games and ways of looking at games. It's like music before and after the internet.
The internet was wonderful, but it did produce a lot of homogenous music. There used to be musical trends based on region, like Chicago's Industrial sound, Detroit's Techn
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There are quite a few quality games developed by Russian companies
putin banned that (Score:3)
putin banned that
The Nintendo Switch taught us... (Score:5, Informative)
"It is obvious to everyone: Elbrus processors are not yet at the level required to compete equally with the PS5 and Xbox
It doesn't need to be as Nintendo has proven over the last 7 years. The Nintendo Switch is nowhere near the power of the PS5 and Xbox Series X yet it has outsold the PS5 and Xbox for most of their generation. Nintendo figured out it's about the games, not the power of the system you play them on.
Nintendo Switch can't do 4k others can (Score:2)
Nintendo Switch can't do 4k others can
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>Nintendo Switch can't do 4k others can
It doesn't need to be as Nintendo has proven over the last 7 years. The Nintendo Switch is nowhere near the power of the PS5 and Xbox Series X yet it has outsold the PS5 and Xbox for most of their generation. Nintendo figured out it's about the games, not the power of the system you play them on.
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Nintendo Switch can't do 4k others can
Neither can the ASUS ROG Ally, the Steam Deck, the Lenovo Legion go etc yet they're selling by the bucketload. Looking at the Steam Hardware Survey the most common resolution for gaming on PCs with 59.98% of the market share is 1080p. The top 10 GPUs in the Steam Hardware Survey are all ones targetting 1080p/1440p.
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The Switch has two major competitive advantages over the PS5 and Xbox: the Nintendo brand -- including its IP -- and a lower price point, which means people can buy it if the two "halo" platforms are too expensive. Any Russian console would be at a tremendous disadvantage on branding and probably a disadvantage on price/performance (because the sanctions mean they gave to use older, less dense fabrication processes).
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"It is obvious to everyone: Elbrus processors are not yet at the level required to compete equally with the PS5 and Xbox
It doesn't need to be as Nintendo has proven over the last 7 years. The Nintendo Switch is nowhere near the power of the PS5 and Xbox Series X yet it has outsold the PS5 and Xbox for most of their generation. Nintendo figured out it's about the games, not the power of the system you play them on.
Exactly.
Just like with TVs ... if the acting and plot sucks, then seeing the actors' pores in higher definition is not going to help.
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Yeah but when Russians see video streams of incredibly realistic FPS games they're not gonna be too happy with some 1990s-era DOS shoot-em-up because neither their hardware nor their games industry is anywhere capable of matching what the rest of the world has.
I always find the American's mental view of what Russia is like hilarious. You still think of it like the Soviet era running around in cardboard cars. Cyberpunk 2077 was written by a company from a former Soviet Bloc nation. Once again I point you back to the Nintendo Switch. Then there's all the handhelds like ROG Ally and Steam Deck where you have to run graphics at low/medium settings and still may not hit 60FPS at 900p, let alone 1080p and people are happy using those.
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Russina insecurity. Oh you think we're a bunch of ass backward gopniks!
Moscow.gif, StPete.gif ..... see! even nicer than your american suburb!
Dude we do have google street maps and we can talk to russians and see how many of you are totally backward and toothless with our own eyes.
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The Elbrus processors are no where near the performance quality of even the Nintendo Switch.
Here is a link [tomshardware.com] describing some benchmarks a Youtuber apparently ran on it back in 2023, with Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind (which is 20 to 25 years old) having frame rates drop as low as 30fps. Other more modern games (with medium settings) could no do better than 10 to 20 frames per second.
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Was that written by Grok or something even more stupid - and yes, I am giving you the benefit of the doubt here by pressing the point that AI was used rather than you own intelligence.
It's a First Gen Product (Score:2)
The first generation of a product from anyone is unlikely to match the 4th and 5th generation products from companies who have been doing it for decades.
I remember having boundless fun on my Atari 2600 in the 80's. In some ways raw processing power has stymied creativity in computing.
I'm not saying their system will be anywhere near as primitive as an Atari. But technical limitations have bred some incredible solutions over human history.
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I had one of those 2600's in a joystick c. 2012 and would play Yar's Revenge occasionally.
Some of us are easy to amuse.
that's fine... (Score:1)
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everyone else would be better off if Russians just died.
The planet would be better off if Americans just died. Everything that's currently fucking over the world, the climate and society comes out of the USA.
Obligatory (Score:2)
Um, ok? (Score:1)
Tetris (Score:1)
In Putin's Russia (Score:2)
What matters most in a game ? (Score:2)
Impressive graphics or good game-play ? Ideally you will have both but if forced to choose I will have a good, engaging game.
COD Russian version (Score:1)
The world's largest microprocessor! (Score:2)
This reminds me of a skit I saw on TV as a kid about the Soviets releasing the world's largest microprocessor. Might have been on SNL; can't remember for sure.
In any case, I'm sorry for the Russian gamers. Maybe they could take to the streets and demand Putin pull his troops out of Ukraine so they could enjoy PS5 and XBOXs again.
ÐÐÐÐРУÐÑÐÐнÐ!
Ð"ÐÑоÑм ÑÐÐÐÐ!
ðYOE
Found a photo of Russia's game console (Score:1)