It’s no secret that Russia is slowly working toward developing its own technology, avoiding Western technology as much as possible, and its latest effort appears to be related to video games. According to a report from TechSpot, on December 25, Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy Anton Gorelkin revealed some information about a home video game console being developed by the Ministry of Industry and Commerce. The theoretical console would be powered by an Elbrus processor and run Aurora or Alt Linux, both Russian forks of the popular Linux operating system.
According to TechSpot, the Elbrus processor was developed by SPARC Technologies’ Moscow center and is primarily designed for defense, critical infrastructure, and other applications. This processor doesn’t come close to what Intel, AMD, or Arm are producing at the moment, and it certainly won’t reach PS5 or Xbox levels of power. Despite the inferior chipset, Gorelkin emphasized that the console is not designed to play ports of old games, but can play “domestic video game products.” Perhaps this means that Russia will also need its own developer community to design these games.
There’s also another console in the works called Fog Play, but it’s more of a cloud gaming device. Users who own high-end computers can rent their computers to Fog Play owners and play games on those computers through the cloud.
These potential consoles are just one part of Russia’s broader technological sovereignty plans. Russia has been trying to make this a reality since the invasion of Ukraine and subsequent Western sanctions, but its digital isolation has made this difficult.
The adoption of Astra Linux in government, intelligence, military, and even educational computers is part of Russia’s efforts to develop its own technology. To this end, Russia is also replacing the file and website scanner VirusTotal (owned by Google) with its own Multiscanner platform, fearing US government infiltration.
Despite these advances, Russia remains heavily dependent on Chinese technology. Chinese smartphones are popular in Russia, and Chinese electronics and military technology continues to flow into Russia, even though the Middle Kingdom has stopped exporting them to the United States.
Russia is too dependent on China and will likely never be able to achieve true technological independence in video games or other important areas, as it does not have the capacity to produce PS5 or Xbox-level chips. Russia’s two video game consoles are a good example of the challenges the country faces given its poor relations with many of the world’s superpowers. Just as Elbrus processors can’t truly compete with the best gaming consoles, Russia will continue to fight for technological sovereignty.
