Putin’s ‘Sovereign’ Game Console ends up being a Chinese Doorstop with a Russian Accent
In his never-ending quest to prove that Russia can do everything the West can do—except democracy, indoor toilets, and basic morality—Vladimir Putin has unveiled his latest masterpiece of innovation: a PlayStation-style console cooked up by Russian tech wizards and forged in the fires of patriotic glory.
Except it wasn’t.
Instead, the so-called “sovereign console,” commissioned by presidential decree to vanquish the PlayStation and liberate Russian teenagers from the clutches of the decadent west, turned out to be a glorified Chinese game box with the word “ИГРАТЬ” (Play) where “Start” used to be.
Welcome to the cutting edge of 2007.
This steaming pile of microchipped mediocrity was the lovechild of Moscow’s bold new tech independence campaign. Russian developers were given millions of rubles, a state mandate, and a PowerPoint about “import substitution.” They responded by cracking open AliExpress, clicking “Buy Now,” and hot-gluing Cyrillic labels onto plastic shells from a Guangzhou warehouse clearance sale.
Inside: the same Chinese motherboard used in bootleg DVD players. Outside: a red-white-blue sticker, held on with what appears to be borscht.
The Kremlin pitched this as a slap in the face to Silicon Valley. Instead, it landed somewhere between slapstick and slouching surrender. Russian state media tried to hail it as a “symbol of sovereign resilience.” But tech bloggers, actual gamers, and half the country’s 12-year-olds immediately recognized the device as a recycled Shenzhen model that retails for $32 and comes bundled with Angry Birds knockoffs.
Then came the real plot twist: users online pointed out that the “Russian” console bears a suspicious resemblance to the Terrans Force Handle 5, a Chinese gaming unit that runs on an American-made AMD processor and sells on Chinese e-commerce sites for $999. The only meaningful innovation? Swapping the ABXY buttons for the bold new frontier of АБВГ. Truly, the motherland strikes again.
Cornered by reality, the developers at Fplus issued a statement that practically admitted defeat in PR-speak:
“We study the best user solutions and focus on their strengths.” Translation: “Yes, we copied it, but we copied the good stuff.”
Also, as they helpfully noted, “the component base in the gaming industry is largely the same for everyone” — which is Russian for “we can’t make any of it ourselves.”
The gameplay? Glitchy. The graphics? Grainy. The flagship launch title? A propaganda sandbox called Putin Kart: Race for the Motherland, where every track ends in a sanctions checkpoint and Ukraine is “Locked DLC.”
Even the controller design seems strategic—ergonomically perfect for small, underpaid hands assembling them somewhere near the Yangtze.
This isn’t the first time Russia’s tried to cosplay as a tech power. In the ‘90s, they slapped stickers on Taiwanese Famicoms and called it the Dendy. But back then, at least the lies were cheerful. This latest effort is pure black comedy: a genocidal dictator pretending his country can make a console when it can’t even make a toaster without Chinese microchips and North Korean screws.
The real final boss here isn’t Microsoft or Sony—it’s modernity. And Putin just rage-quit the game.
Russia is a joke.
