Putin Wants Russia to Make Its Own Consoles and Steam-Like Platform

As part of a plan to promote the socio-economic development of the region of Kaliningrad, Russian President Vladimir Putin has approved a proposal to create consoles and a platform similar to Steam. This initiative, which is one of nine instructions aimed at boosting the region’s economy, will take advantage of the area’s Special Economic Zone status and the recent establishment of a silicon production facility.

Despite taking place in late January, it has been reported that Putin did not approve the instructions until Monday. The individual responsible for carrying out these instructions is none other than Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, who has been given until June 15 to come up with a plan for the following objective.

The matter at hand is the efficient management of producing both stationary and portable game consoles, in addition to developing an operating system and cloud system for distributing games and programs to users.

It is certainly a challenging task that has been given to Mishustin. The current sanctions imposed after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will present significant obstacles in the development of portable and/or home consoles using AMD, NVIDIA, or Intel hardware. In addition, the bankruptcy of Russian CPU manufacturer Baikal in August 2023 and its lack of competitiveness in terms of performance further complicate the situation.

Despite the Western withdrawal from Russia, game consoles were never really popular in the country. However, PC games, particularly shooters and MMOs, have always been in high demand. Therefore, the latter part of the plan, which involves creating an alternative to Steam and SteamOS, may garner more interest from the local gaming community. However, this does not mean the task will be easy. Even with vast resources, it took Epic some time to establish itself as a major competitor to Valve’s dominant PC platform. It remains uncertain how much of a budget Putin has allocated for this endeavor, as he is currently engaged in a multi-year war.