Delicieuxz
[H]ard|Gawd
- Joined
- May 11, 2016
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Putin's ordered his government to look into creating Russia's own Steam Deck, SteamOS, and basically Steam itself
The government instruction Google-translated from http://kremlin.ru/events/president/news/73305
I'm curious to see what people think about the actual timeframes it might take Russia to do some of this stuff. I don't believe it would take that long for Russia just to create its own content-delivery platform for gaming, as Russia already has those for other things. For an OS, Russia could make a Linux distro tailored to gaming and could follow China's example with its Harmony OS, starting from an existing OS platform and working on it until its ready to completely break-off into its own thing.
Just as they did with China, sanctions on Russia have already been spurring major domestic business growth in Russia, with the Russian government making a concerted effort to make the country self-sufficient in as much as possible. And, in general, Russia is having a large amount of success in its efforts.
When it comes to video games, various Western platforms have stopped sales in Russia, including GoG, Epic, Microsoft, and previously Activision Blizzard (now also owned by Microsoft), while various Western payment services, including Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and PayPal, have suspended their international operation with Russia, limiting the ways Russians can buy games from other Western platforms that use those services. I suspect that's the instigator of the idea that for Russia create its own gaming platforms and services, though I think there could be additional reasons for the goal, including depriving the West from being able to gather data on Russians' online, spending, and entertainment habits, and creating a visible Russian presence and influence in the global market, as a soft-power tool.
As the PC Gamer article says, Russia and China could help each other by offering things they each have and the other can use in their independence drives. And with its domestic chip, OS, mobile phone and apps, and EV production, China has already shown that sanctions are best taken as an opportunity to replace and innovate. I recently saw a quote of Elon Musk from long ago, mocking the idea that China could ever competently compete in electric vehicles, compared to him today warning that China will demolish EV rivals unless the US imposes trade restrictions.
The deadline for this consideration is June 15th of this year, and that honestly doesn't give them a lot of time to come up with anything other than: "Sir, it's going to be tough. But if we just copy Valve and create a seminal work of PC gaming brilliance first, the rest ought to fall into place."
Kommersant, a Russian-language newspaper, has investigated how feasible it is itself, and has spoken to industry figures, including the product director at Lesta Games, the company running the World of Tanks clone in the region. They're thinking basically comes down to the same, stating that creating a whole system from scratch could take 5 - 10 years and still end up some 15 years behind other systems from a technical point of view.
It will be interesting to see the conclusion the Russian government comes to, but given that this is essentially coming off the back of the starting up of silicon production at the Enkor plant in Chernyakhovsk, Kaliningrad, it all feels part of a push to domesticate the country's technology sector.
The plant is estimated to be able to produce 200 million silicon wafers annually, primarily to be part of Russia's push for its own solar cells. But that's a lot of wafers (though I couldn't find out at what size) and maybe there's some consideration about what else it can do with that abundance of silicon.
The government instruction Google-translated from http://kremlin.ru/events/president/news/73305
I'm curious to see what people think about the actual timeframes it might take Russia to do some of this stuff. I don't believe it would take that long for Russia just to create its own content-delivery platform for gaming, as Russia already has those for other things. For an OS, Russia could make a Linux distro tailored to gaming and could follow China's example with its Harmony OS, starting from an existing OS platform and working on it until its ready to completely break-off into its own thing.
Just as they did with China, sanctions on Russia have already been spurring major domestic business growth in Russia, with the Russian government making a concerted effort to make the country self-sufficient in as much as possible. And, in general, Russia is having a large amount of success in its efforts.
When it comes to video games, various Western platforms have stopped sales in Russia, including GoG, Epic, Microsoft, and previously Activision Blizzard (now also owned by Microsoft), while various Western payment services, including Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and PayPal, have suspended their international operation with Russia, limiting the ways Russians can buy games from other Western platforms that use those services. I suspect that's the instigator of the idea that for Russia create its own gaming platforms and services, though I think there could be additional reasons for the goal, including depriving the West from being able to gather data on Russians' online, spending, and entertainment habits, and creating a visible Russian presence and influence in the global market, as a soft-power tool.
As the PC Gamer article says, Russia and China could help each other by offering things they each have and the other can use in their independence drives. And with its domestic chip, OS, mobile phone and apps, and EV production, China has already shown that sanctions are best taken as an opportunity to replace and innovate. I recently saw a quote of Elon Musk from long ago, mocking the idea that China could ever competently compete in electric vehicles, compared to him today warning that China will demolish EV rivals unless the US imposes trade restrictions.
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