News Putin orders development of homegrown Steam Deck-like gaming machines — 100% self-sufficiency goal apparently applies to gaming, too

[Admin]

The creation of a Steam gaming-like ecosystem, including a handheld device, is featured on a new Putin-approved list of development plans for the Kaliningrad region of Russia.

Putin orders development of homegrown Steam Deck-like gaming machines — 100% self-sufficiency goal apparently applies to gaming, too : Read more

 

[Flayed]

This is obviously for controlling drones on the battlefield not gaming.

 

[bit_user]

Can you really call it "homegrown" if all of the important components are designed & made in China?

 

[Ice2burn]

Can you really call it "homegrown" if all of the important components are designed & made in China?

It will probably fail, but it's something to begin with. We can't call any complex technical product "homegrown" in the modern days. American videocards, assembled in China, which use chips manufactured by Taiwan, which was made on Holland EUV equipment from China/Norway silicon and so on ...

 

[bgunner]

I'm curious, if this actually comes to fruition, how this will impact existing ecosystems currently out there.

 

[endocine]

Ruzzia has no problems getting any materials or supplies if it really wants them, despite any sanctions

 

[usertests]

They should buy up the Orange Pi Neo gaming handheld.

 

[mitch074]

Can you really call it "homegrown" if all of the important components are designed & made in China?

Oh, considering history, it's probably more a case of "we'll make a cheap clone of it" - like they did for many consoles (and processors) of the 80's.
China wouldn't be interested in making those : while they're happy about buying cheap oil and gas, selling hi-tech stuff that they themselves need internally wouldn't go too well.
They might sell surplus production, but considering how much China hungers for 7nm chips and how little of it they can produce internally, it sure as heck isn't going to sell them to Russia - be it for game consoles or whatever - any time soon.

 

[bit_user]

It will probably fail, but it's something to begin with. We can't call any complex technical product "homegrown" in the modern days. American videocards, assembled in China,

I know "homegrown" is a relative thing, but looking at the recent history of computer products from Russia, about the only thing I've seen that truly has a claim to the term "homegrown" is their ELBRUS CPUs, which I doubt would be used for something like a handheld gaming device.

When talking about US tech products, at least you can point to the fact that the hardware & software design is primarily by the US (even if some of the work is outsourced). Yes, manufacturing is outsourced, but (aside from the cutting-edge chips) is also largely commodity and can be relocated if necessary.

which use chips manufactured by Taiwan, which was made on Holland EUV equipment from China/Norway silicon and so on ...

Saying you need indigenous equipment is setting a whole new standard for "homegrown". I think most people wouldn't agree with that definition.

 

[dimar]

This will completely fail. All the smart people left the country.

 

[why_wolf]

Yeah Chinese clone consoles incoming. They'll have an easier time on the actual game development front, but realistically they will get flooded by the Chinese game devs who already know what they're doing. So many gacha games.

Of course I doubt the Russian government is actually going to do anything beyond making this announcement. As soon as internal supply can produce what the Russian military needs there will be zero government interest or money to produce additional commercial products.

There probably is one or two government ministers who are aware that all Russia is doing is trading a flood of Western products for a Tsunami of Chinese ones. So the end economic position for Russia doesn't change at all, being reliant on commercial imports.

 

[Pliny The Welder]

Central planning worked so well the last time may as well give it another go.

 

[ThomasKinsley]

Can you really call it "homegrown" if all of the important components are designed & made in China?

Most assuredly not, but if they take open source components and really dedicate themselves to forking it, it can ultimately become their own. But Russia does not have the largest open source community, nor are they noted for having strong experience in self-sufficiency in tech. The two biggest examples of Russian software I can think of is Kaspersky and Telegram, and both have partially left the country. It's a mess for them, so borrowing from China and forking is their best bet.

 

[hotaru251]

given recent article about how a bunch of their own homegrown chips fail i dont see this working and ends up beign a waste of $ for the country ;/

Would like to be wrong but just track record isnt so good.

 

[ohio_buckeye]

Be realistic though, any country of that size should likely have their own tech anyway. If the USA, which I’m from there, were wise, we’d have figured out having a good supply of boards, CPUs, ram storage etc all made here and our own software in the event anything in the world stage would ever go south.

While I’m not saying I support Russia, it looks like they’ve at least got the foresight to start thinking of this. I’m sure many of these kinds of devices will be used for drones etc. But also something to be said if you are fighting wars etc and want to make sure your population stays happy with you during that time also.

 

[LabRat 891]

Gonna *need* one of these for my collection of 'Curios'.

Also, yes. Clearly, there are uses beyond 'gaming'.
First thing that comes to mind would be in-field AI/MI using the GPU.

 

[bit_user]

Be realistic though, any country of that size should likely have their own tech anyway. If the USA ...

It's 9th in the world, if you rank by population. Less than half that of the USA (which is #3). Just ahead of it are Bangladesh and Brazil. Mexico is just behind it. Should they also have their own tech, anyway?

List of countries by population (United Nations) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

And if not, then it seems like you're really not considering population as the determining factor. Don't tell me you're going by geographic area, since what the heck does that have to do with tech??

 

[ivan_vy]

"might have to run on Baikal processing"
no it won't, probably will be a chinese ARM and games will be developed to train new soldiers in drone operation.

 

[xtc-604]

I'm curious, if this actually comes to fruition, how this will impact existing ecosystems currently out there.

0 impact.

There's two sides to this, Russia will fail at both.

1)software:
- Developing an OS that works well and good takes YEARS and a LOT of talent. Look at Linux, despite the many talents that work on that project endlessly, it still sits there flopping.

- Developing relevant drivers for their own homegrown hardware, is going to be absolute shit. Look at Intel's ARC, even with top level talent and a plethora of resources, it still flounders in drivers.

- Gaming studios to develop games, all the big studios are owned by microsoft, EA, etc, they aren't going to spend the resources to develop games for this unknown platform with questionable hardware. So there likely won't be much in terms of games.

2)hardware:
- Russia is even further behind than China in terms of chip technology and it's not likely that China will give up their hard learned information to Russia.

- Outside of AMD/NVIDIA/Intel, there are basically 0 graphics hardware suppliers, and none of these companies will be able to provide any information to Russia.

This project will likely yield one of those cheap portable emulators that you can buy from Ebay/AliExpress, Amazon, etc.

 

[blppt]

" Developing an OS that works well and good takes YEARS and a LOT of talent. Look at Linux, despite the many talents that work on that project endlessly, it still sits there flopping."

That's a bit different though---if, say, there was no competitor or Microsoft was somehow embargoed from the U.S., Linux would be just fine. Especially if the government took a real financial interest in developing it.

 

[bit_user]

1)software:
- Developing an OS that works well and good takes YEARS and a LOT of talent.

I'm convinced they'll probably just take LoongArch CPUs or even some ARM-based CPU from China. In either case, they'll use a Linux distro where all the work has already been done.

Look at Linux, despite the many talents that work on that project endlessly, it still sits there flopping.

Valve is using Linux on Steam Deck, proving it's good enough for a gaming machine.

- Developing relevant drivers for their own homegrown hardware,

Again, they could just take Chinese GPUs + drivers. On Linux, you get a further advantage of just how much Mesa already does for you.

- Gaming studios to develop games, all the big studios are owned by microsoft, EA, etc, they aren't going to spend the resources to develop games for this unknown platform with questionable hardware. So there likely won't be much in terms of games.

Russia does have Unigene, which looks respectable to me. For a couple decades, it consistently had some of the nicest looking GPU benchmarks you can run on Linux.

Between that and some games translated from Chinese, it'll be a heck of a lot more entertaining than the games I had as a young child.

- Outside of AMD/NVIDIA/Intel, there are basically 0 graphics hardware suppliers,

ARM has Mali, Imagination/PowerVR is still alive (under Chinese ownership), and don't forget about Verisilicon/Vivante (Chinese). There's also Think Silicon, which is probably off limits after getting bought by AMCC. But, I'm sure some of the players in the Chinese GPU game have their own, indigenous GPU IP, so there's that.

This project will likely yield one of those cheap portable emulators that you can buy from Ebay/AliExpress, Amazon, etc.

Maybe.

 

[xtc-604]

I'm convinced they'll probably just take LoongArch CPUs or even some ARM-based CPU from China. In either case, they'll use a Linux distro where all the work has already been done.


Valve is using Linux on Steam Deck, proving it's good enough for a gaming machine.


Again, they could just take Chinese GPUs + drivers. On Linux, you get a further advantage of just how much Mesa already does for you.


Russia does have Unigene, which looks respectable to me. For a couple decades, it consistently had some of the nicest looking GPU benchmarks you can run on Linux.

Between that and some games translated from Chinese, it'll be a heck of a lot more entertaining than the games I had as a young child.


ARM has Mali, Imagination/PowerVR is still alive (under Chinese ownership), and don't forget about Verisilicon/Vivante (Chinese). There's also Think Silicon, which is probably off limits after getting bought by AMCC. But, I'm sure some of the players in the Chinese GPU game have their own, indigenous GPU IP, so there's that.


Maybe.

The chinese CPUs are years behind if they do so choose to use it. And a fully russian CPU would be decades behind.

Doubtful, the article already states that they need to have a homegrown OS. To my ears, that's a fully self developed OS, not a skin layered on top of Linux.

The only Chinese GPU that is semi working, is the Moore Threads unit and as you may have seen, it's performance is lackluster.

Again years behind.

A game engine does not determine whether or not a game will be good, without the studios, it's nothing. Not to mention, i highly doubt that Russian/Chinese hardware will be able to yield great results with Unigene, all of Unigene's renders were done with Western hardware. If you scour the internet for games developed by Russian studios, it paints a VERY bleak image.

The most well known Russian developed game is Escape from Tarkov, and as a player with 5k hours, it runs like absolute dog water on even my setup (7950x3d, 64gb ram, RTX 4090)

I'm not sure what kind of games you played as a child, but mine were awesome...Street Fighter 2, Super Mario and later on Diablo, Diablo 2, Starcraft, Warcraft, Rainbow Six, etc.

Mali, Imagination/Power VR's performance is FAR from even what a GTX1060 can do.

 

[Alvar "Miles" Udell]

“Consider the issue of organizing the production of stationary and portable game consoles and game consoles, as well as the creation of an operating system and a cloud system for delivering games and programs to users,” says the Putin-approved instruction.

The console itself doesn't have to be very powerful IF the operating system and games are running in the cloud, and they could run those games on systems powered by nVidia hardware sourced from China with some Russian label badged over it for the press, with the OS just an existing Linux distro with a custom UI and a name change, and the digital store owned by the Russian government through which they take a (quite likely substantial) cut of the profits like Steam and other digital stores.

Though the consoles themselves don't have to be very powerful, especially if they're targeting home grown games as well. The Nintendo Switch, for example, isn't particularly fast yet is fairly popular around the world.

 

[jkflipflop98]

It sounds like they're basically trying to create the Russian Wish.com version of Valve.

 

[Murissokah]

Yeah, because nobody had the idea to try and create their own Steam. Turns out it's harder than it seems.