Russia’s first console is said to be “slowly taking shape”. It is certain that the Elbrus processor from the Moscow Center of SPARC Technologies (MCST, МЦСТ) will be used. When it comes to operating systems, you can choose between two Russian Linux distributions Aurora and Alt Linux.
Advertisement
Anton Vadimovich Gorelkin, a politician close to Putin, has revealed this through his Telegram channel. He is a member of the State Duma as deputy head of the parliamentary committee on information policy.
slow domestic farming
The Elbrus processors are attractive with their VLIW (Very Long Instruction Word) architecture – and so far anything but fast. At its own Elbrus partner conference in winter 2021, the last eight-core It has been described as lame and not suitable for everyday useCalculators are very slow; The clock frequency is very low and the cache is very small.
Since then, MCST has made perhaps little progress: chip contract manufacturers such as TSMC and Samsung have severed ties due to Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. At best, Russian companies can rely on Chinese manufacturing technology, which China itself needs.
Gorelkin admits: “Elbrus processors have not yet developed to the level where they can compete with PS5 and Xbox, which means the solution does not need to be standardized.”
However, if exclusively Russian components are used in the console as needed, unconventional solutions also do not look very promising. On top of that, there is a lack of GPU technology to accelerate 3D graphics.
PC games will not run on consoles due to foreign architecture. Gorelkin writes, “The purpose of this platform is primarily to promote and promote home video game products and expand its audience beyond PC and mobile games.”
Cloud Gaming…
Meanwhile, Russian MTC Group is looking to make cloud gaming big in its country. Fog Play is the name of our own service, which will be available with Streaming Stick in December 2024 startedThe Fog Play Stick is connected to an HDMI port like the Amazon Fire TV Stick and supports games in Full HD resolution (1920 × 1080 pixels) at 60 frames per second (fps).
The hardware, including the colorful, glowing controller, costs 4,990 rubles, which is equivalent to less than 45 euros. Moreover, each hour of play should cost 13 to 19 rubles, that is, 11 to 17 cents. If you play for two hours every day, you will earn about 7 to 10 euros per month.
…with Chinese hardware
However, the Fog Play Stick uses entirely Chinese components, including an Amlogic S905Y4 processor with four older ARM Cortex A53 cores and the Android TV operating system. The servers are said to be “Russian”, but there are no details about the hardware.
The service advertises over 10,000 games available. However, not all of them go smoothly: Gorelkin writes that the officially supported action role-playing game “Smutu” (“Смуту”) is not playable at all.
“If it weren’t for the lack of ‘smoota’, I would give the MTC console a solid B,” he summarized.
(mma)
