In a desperate attempt to shun western technology, President Vladimir Putin has ordered the creation of a new Russian video game console.
Now, as a Russian chief admits it won’t be as good as the Xbox or the PS5, commentators have flocked to social media to mock the upcoming machine, dubbing it the ‘Putindo 64’.
On Reddit, someone posted: ‘The Putindo is gonna be a wild collectors item in a few decades.’
Another user posted ‘I only hyev tetris’ in a reference to the famous puzzle video game created in 1985 by Russia’s Alexey Pajitnov.
Another said: ‘what is going on with russian government, why are they trying to develop a console when they are fighting at the front.’
Until now, Russia’s most memorable video game console was the Dendy, sold in Russia from 1992, although it was made in Taiwan using Chinese components.
Following heavy sanctions since Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, the top Xbox PS5 and Nintendo consoles are no longer being imported to Russia.
This appears to have forced the country to come up with its own homegrown alternative.
Russian gaming console, which is being developed by the Ministry of Industry and Trade on behalf of President Vladimir Putin (pictured)
Produced from late 1992, Dendy consoles were manufactured in Taiwan using Chinese components on behalf of the Russian company Steepler
Anton Gorelkin, Russia’s deputy chairman of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy for Russia, revealed details of the device in a post on Telegram.
He said the Russian gaming console, which is being developed by the Ministry of Industry and Trade on behalf of the President, is ‘gradually taking shape’.
‘I hope my colleagues will approach this task with full responsibility and come up with something truly groundbreaking,’ he said, translated from Russian.
‘This platform should primarily serve the goals of promoting and popularizing domestic video game products, expanding their audience beyond PC and mobile gaming.’
Gorelkin said the console will based on the Elbrus computer processor, which is made by Moscow Center of SPARC Technologies (MCST), while using ‘other electronic components of Russian manufacture’.
However, as it stands, Elbrus is no match for the Zen 2 made by American company AMD which powers the top western consoles.
‘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 added.
Elbrus is mainly intended for domestic applications in critical infrastructure, defence, and ‘other sensitive areas’, TechSpot reports.
Following heavy sanctions since Putin’s invasion of Ukraine , the top Xbox PS5 and Nintendo consoles are no longer being imported to Russia (file photo)
‘From Russia with fun’: Pajitnov developed the very first version of Tetris on an Electronika 60. Tetris was published by Nintendo for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and later the Game Boy
As well as the Elbrus-powered console, Russian telecommunications firm MTS is also working on a small stick-like gadget that users would plug into their TVs.
Coming with an Xbox-like controller at a cost of no more than $45 (£36), the stick would stream games from the cloud, TechSpot reports.
It’s already known that Putin has been pushing the creation of a domestically-made console, although Gorelkin has offered most details about its progress.
Last year, government called for Russia to produce ‘stationary and portable game consoles’ plus software and a cloud system for delivering games to customers.
Putin floated the order when top video game makers, including Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo, halted sales to Russia, following the country’s invasion of Ukraine.
Russia has one of the largest video game player bases in the world and was the first to recognise competitive video game playing as a sport, in 2001.
Russian game designer Alexey Pajitnov is best known for creating Tetris in 1985 while working at the Dorodnitsyn Computing Centre in Moscow.
Russian brand Elektronika released clones of Nintendo’s line of Game & Watch consoles of the 1980s, which predated SNES and Nintendo 64 in the 1990s.
Russian telecommunications firm MTS is also working on a small stick-like gadget that users would plug into their TVs (pictured)
Russian game designer Alexey Pajitnov is best known for creating Tetris in 1985 while working at the Dorodnitsyn Computing Centre in Moscow
It was Dendy, released to the Russian market in 1992, that’s as close the country has ever got to a successful video game console, although really it’s an Asian creation.
Dendy – manufactured in Taiwan using Chinese components – went on to sell 6 million units in Russia before it was discontinued in 1998.
It’s unclear when the new console will be released to the Russian market, but newspaper Kommersant reports it could take a decade.
‘Market participants say that there is no competence to produce their own PlayStation and Xbox consoles, and creating such a system from scratch will take up to ten years,’ it said last year.
