Winner Winner Chicken Dinner
December 22, 2020 12:06 PM   Subscribe

They have released 8 bit retro games, virtual reality simulations, and even dating sims. But now, the folks at KFC are creating a console.

As reported by TechRadar, the KFConsole, built in conjunction with PC hardware maker Cooler Master, will have a warming chamber to contain a chicken dinner for the winner winner, along with decent PC hardware built in.
posted by NoxAeternum (38 comments total) 8 users marked this as a favorite
 
Subtle Utah monolith cameo.
posted by cmfletcher at 12:31 PM on December 22, 2020 [3 favorites]


I had to check that it isn't April 1st.
I am into neither 'gaming' nor fried chicken, so I hadn't realized there was such a void to be filled.
But, I guess it's brilliant, or, possibly as in Spinal Tap, 'There's a fine line between clever and stupid.'
Yeah, I caught the Utah monolith as well.
posted by MtDewd at 12:34 PM on December 22, 2020


Mildly amusing, but it's really all just a big old ad for a fast food mega corp.
posted by SoberHighland at 12:39 PM on December 22, 2020 [11 favorites]


Untitled Fried Chicken Game
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 12:41 PM on December 22, 2020 [14 favorites]


The previous KFC marketing thread is still open lol
posted by oulipian at 12:50 PM on December 22, 2020 [9 favorites]


I'm imagining finding one of these in a charity thrift store in 2040 by stank alone.
posted by scruss at 1:15 PM on December 22, 2020 [7 favorites]


Anyone who'd game while eating KFC is, in my book, violating a cardinal rule of equipment handling, specifically don't eat greasy food and use a controller. It's not just disgusting for people who play after, it's bad for the equipment, and it's bad for your performance.
posted by seanmpuckett at 1:22 PM on December 22, 2020 [11 favorites]


Wow more KFC marketing who here isn't into talking about KFC's new viral marketing and btw Triple Crust chicken is the bomb amirite
posted by benzenedream at 1:25 PM on December 22, 2020 [3 favorites]


I think, as a cultural artifact, this console/chicken warmer will be highly sought by future archeologists.
posted by some loser at 1:27 PM on December 22, 2020 [2 favorites]


I haven't played a console, nor eaten KFC in about a decade. Yet, why does this call to me?

Also, great post title.
posted by meinvt at 2:10 PM on December 22, 2020 [2 favorites]


Don't forget the upcoming, seemingly bonkers KFC Lifetime movie. Seriously, what the fuck is going on with this company? They're trying rebrand as an uber-meta brand?
posted by zardoz at 2:45 PM on December 22, 2020 [2 favorites]


Running a modern gaming pc consumes so much electricity that you can use the waste heat from it to warm industrially-produced food. If this wasn't a marketing stunt, it might be some kind of commentary.
posted by box at 2:45 PM on December 22, 2020 [3 favorites]


I'd rather have MAME on my Instant Pot.
posted by Reverend John at 2:56 PM on December 22, 2020 [8 favorites]


leeeeroooooyyy jenkins!!!
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 2:59 PM on December 22, 2020 [9 favorites]


A gaming PC or console that can warm up chicken tendies? What are we at now, like two steps away from Idiocracy?
posted by loquacious at 2:59 PM on December 22, 2020 [7 favorites]


Seriously, I'm honestly surprised this isn't a thing yet. I mean gaming related food and beverage appliances specifically designed for use in the living room with some kind of ink cartridge based business model where you basically have a microwave, fountain soda system and refrigerator or freezer all built into one box that doubles as a TV stand and plugs in to your gaming rig so you can operate it with your controller and you don't even have to leave the couch to refill your endless jug of Baja Blast and your fourth plate of mac and cheese and chicken tendies.
posted by loquacious at 3:04 PM on December 22, 2020 [1 favorite]


I prefer my PC chassis liquid-gravy cooled, same as my arteries.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 3:16 PM on December 22, 2020 [2 favorites]


Running a modern gaming pc consumes so much electricity that you can use the waste heat from it to warm industrially-produced food. If this wasn't a marketing stunt, it might be some kind of commentary.

Strictly speaking, all computers are basically complicated electric heaters. i.e. almost all the energy going in comes straight back out as heat. A bit ends up as EM radiation (the screen and LEDs) or kinetic (the air being moved by the fans) etc, but most of the electricity is basically heating up a small slab of silicon or two to 70 degC or so, then using big hunks of metal and fans to move that heat elsewhere so we can keep doing it. The clever bit is that in the process we extract information from the precise paths of the electrons being forced through very narrow channels and gates instead of just wandering about randomly, which is why they cost a lot more than your average space heater.

GPUs haven't really got more thirsty in the last decade; a 2010 nvidia GTX 480 used ~300W at full load; a brand new GTX 3080 is rated for 320W max, or a radeon 6800XT is 300W. What they do do is a *lot* more calculation per watt, largely due to much smaller transistors. Smartphones (and Apple's new ARM laptops) can do an impressive amount of operations now with a heater running at only a couple of watts, but for the latest whizz bang eye candy, you can't beat throwing a lot of electrons at the problem.

You could put a cheap 500W electric heating coil around the bucket for much the same end result (for the greasy fried chicken anyway), but I imagine it wouldn't be quite as eye-catching a marketing stunt.
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 4:20 PM on December 22, 2020 [7 favorites]




"Mom, can I stop playing Animal Crossing now?"

"Another two hours, honey, the pot roast is almost done."
posted by MrVisible at 4:28 PM on December 22, 2020 [4 favorites]


This thread is full of humbugs. I would like to hit pause on my video game, reach over, and snack on some fried chicken. Ideally with a cold beer. Yes of course I will need to thoroughly wash my hands after, I’m not a barbarian. To perfect this it will come with some sort of hot sauce dispenser or holder. Idiocracy is the shit going on outside your door America, it’s the anti-mask assholes and Q-anon chucklefucks. Enjoying fried chicken and video games together is harmless greasy goodness.
posted by supercrayon at 4:34 PM on December 22, 2020 [9 favorites]


When I was a student I had a Power Mac G4. When you open it up, there's a metal heat sink in there with radiating fins the size of Ryvita biscuits. The model was notorious for noise and heat output, it was wonderful in the winters, I could write essays in shorts, in the summer, a lot less convenient. That computer would have roasted a chicken without any worries at all.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 4:34 PM on December 22, 2020 [2 favorites]


Can you run Sneak King on it?
posted by rodlymight at 4:53 PM on December 22, 2020 [3 favorites]


I think I read about this future in a Haruki Murakami novel once.

Ah, here it is:
"So what do you want?"
"Have I got a girl for you!"
"Oh, I get it," Hoshino said. "You're a pimp. That's why you're dressed up like that."
"Mr Hoshino, I don't know how many times I have to say this, but I'm not dressed up as anyone. I am Colonel Sanders. Don't get mixed up here, all right?"
"OK... But if you're the real Colonel Sanders, what the heck are you doing working as a pimp in a back alley in Takamatsu?"
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 5:21 PM on December 22, 2020 [5 favorites]


in an optimistic future people will look back with amusement about how once long ago humans generated heat through methods that didn’t produce computation as a side benefit.
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 6:56 PM on December 22, 2020 [4 favorites]


Maybe the activity involves mining KFCoins on the blocKFChain.

This is genius.
posted by aramaic at 7:27 PM on December 22, 2020 [4 favorites]


Neither thread has the KFC Crocs!

To perfect this it will come with some sort of hot sauce dispenser or holder.

Car vent sauce holders can easily be repurposed for inside-the-house usage.
posted by rhizome at 7:52 PM on December 22, 2020 [2 favorites]


Okay, we've given 6 capitalism more than a fair shake of the stick, but I think this d development means that we can all agree that it's enough now, and it's time to try something else, right?
posted by Dysk at 9:27 PM on December 22, 2020


GPUs haven't really got more thirsty in the last decade; a 2010 nvidia GTX 480 used ~300W at full load; a brand new GTX 3080 is rated for 320W max

Yes and no. You've kinda picked the previous high water mark to compare against - a 2080ti (previous top of the line) was rated at 250W TDP (but most cards, especially from board partners with their factory OC ran closer to 270-280W. The 1080ti before that was rated at 250W. The 3080 is rated at 320,yes, but the actual numbers are also likely to be higher in a similar way. But that ignores the 3090, which is rated at a whopping 350W (a full 100W over the previous top of the line card) and again, we'll likely see many 3090s consuming more total board power than that. This generation absolutely represents a significant step up in power consumption relative to the last five or six generations of GPU (at least a af far as nvidia is concerned, and the AMD cards with 300W+ TDPs that have launched in prior generations in the last decade have been widely criticised for their high power consumption and heat output - despite drawing less than anything current gen).
posted by Dysk at 9:37 PM on December 22, 2020 [1 favorite]


The bit about getting grease on the controllers, makes me think the real gamer food product we need is like the feeding machine from Modern Times. Something to hold the chicken in front of your face while you're eating.

Also, instead of all these goofy marketing gimmicks, Popeye's just makes chicken that tastes five times better. Every time I get sucked into talking about one of KFC's weird marketing things, I feel like I should remind people how good Popeye's chicken is, just to balance things out.
posted by RobotHero at 10:11 PM on December 22, 2020 [7 favorites]


This is the luxury gay space communism we've all been waiting for right?
posted by LizBoBiz at 2:44 AM on December 23, 2020


Popeye's just makes chicken that tastes five times better

Someone had to mention that positive pullet pontiff, Pope Yes, but really, you just haven't had Mary Brown's yet.
posted by scruss at 3:15 AM on December 23, 2020 [2 favorites]


The previous KFC marketing thread is still open lol

This place is going to the birds
posted by sylvanshine at 3:28 AM on December 23, 2020 [2 favorites]


Someone had to mention that positive pullet pontiff
The Queen, the Vatican, the Gettys, the Rothschilds, and the Colonel before he went tits-up
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 3:41 AM on December 23, 2020 [1 favorite]


> Also, instead of all these goofy marketing gimmicks, Popeye's just makes chicken that tastes five times better.

I'm lucky enough to be a quick drive away from a fried chicken place that's been owned by the same family and rooted to the spot since its founding in the 50s. Their chicken is considerably better than any franchise operation's chicken, they also do ribs (on Tuesdays), pork chops and fish, and the sides are legit: Collard greens, mac and cheese, and fried okra are our go-to but the cabbage is also legit and there's a regular rotation of others I haven't even tried yet. The matriarch, who can't get around much any more, still sits by the checkout every day and greets everybody getting food. A family meal (eight pieces plus four rolls and two quart containers of sides) costs fourteen bucks, and a meaningful portion of that price was used to fund the free family lunches they provided to anybody who asked, from late March through the end of August, to help during the pandemic. The only possible downside is they're only open for lunches on weekdays, so it's been hard to patronize them before working from home became the new white-collar norm.

Popeye's is okay, but I don't love them like I love Chicken Hut. If you have a local chicken place, you should try it. It's probably cheaper and better than what you're used to.
posted by ardgedee at 6:14 AM on December 23, 2020 [1 favorite]


Branding could be better.
posted by lazaruslong at 8:55 AM on December 23, 2020


That Hot Wheels PC is even brighter than that in person. A (now defunct, for extremely sad reasons) computer museum in Canada had one and it was BRIGHT!
posted by scruss at 4:29 PM on December 23, 2020 [1 favorite]


The Queen, the Vatican, the Gettys, the Rothschilds, and the Colonel before he went tits-up
This console better come with wee, beady eyes and a smug grin.
posted by xedrik at 10:29 AM on December 27, 2020


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