History of video games/Platforms/KFConsole

Louisville, Kentucky where the American arm of KFC is based.

History

Development

While the system primarily exists as a KFC marketing stunt, the design and manufacturing of the system was done by the computer component company Coolermaster in collaboration with the Swedish modder known as Timpelay.

Pre-Launch

The console was announced by press release on June 12, 2020, and was originally supposed to launch on November 12, 2020 in line with other 9th generation home console launches. Press release statements containing obviously fake jargon such as "Zinger processor chip clocked at 11GHZ" lead some to question if hardware would actually be made. However the development team continued quietly working on the console while aware of the skepticism.

To ride the publicity of the high-profile delays of the game Cyberpunk 2077, the KFC console was also delayed to December 11, 2020 with an announcement reminiscent of the style used by announcements of the games delays. After being delayed again, on December 23, 2020 real hardware was shown with more concrete details about it's specifications. Fall Guys, perhaps jokingly, was teased as a launch title.

In July 2021 the console was criticized by the National Obesity Form of the United Kingdom.

Technology

The console is said to be based on an Intel NUC 9 extreme compute element, though it is unclear which model was chosen. The system ships with an graphics card made by Asus, which is upgradable and said to be hot swappable. Out of the box graphics capabilities include ray tracing, VR headset support, 4K output, and up to 240 Hz refresh rate output. The console uses dual 1 terabyte PCIe NVME Seagate BarraCuda solid state drives for storage. Unusually for a console with such a small market, these specifications are relatively in line with other consoles of the ninth generation.

Uniquely, the system reuses heat generated by compute elements to keep chicken warm in a specialized chamber. Most game consoles treat generated heat as a waste to be expelled, making the KFConsole one of the only consoles to intentionally retain heat. Interestingly, another marketing focused console released around the same time as the KFConsole, the BL6, also had unconventional heat management to enhance snacking while gaming, though this was to cool beverages rather than heat food, and used thermoelectric cooling technology to transfer heat away from beverages to achieve this rather than reusing waste heat generated by the console.