linuxdevices.com— The Indrema was a open source video game console that was to be released in 2001. Just think of the impact this would have been on the video game world!
Aug 12, 2005View in Crawl 4
Linux or not, it just wasn't a very good idea to come out with something like that and call it a 'video game console' in the hypercompetive console arena.Now if it were a PVR, web browser, email, etc, with games as a bonus side effect.. Then you might have a product.. probably not a very popular one, but at least it'd be feasible.
I believe the top selling games are costing somewhere between 5-20 million to produce right now. That number is only increasing in the future. An open source gaming system would probably produce a few niche games with a cult following. But the games would be produced cheaply and could not achieve the same level of play as the bigger manufacturer's offer. Unless they decided to make games for this Linux system...(unlikely)
Okay, it looks like most of you cats don't remember this thing. I followed it's development closely back then and I was a big mark for it.It didn't work like a typical Linux box. It was more like TiVo, which has a Linux backbone but works more like a kiosk. You'd only see the gaming and MP3 dashboard. No compiling, no messing with drivers, nothing crazy. You don't have to configure drivers on the X-Box, do you? Nope, and that bad boy runs some weird Windows variant.The idea was to have affordable gaming hardware that used open code. You could get a dev kit cheap and make your own stuff for it. Imagine an X-Box that was open to homebrew out of the box. We'd have seen ports of X-Mame, Tux Racer and MPlayer quickly. No need for modding (hard or soft) or crazy hacks.Sadly, it never saw the light of day. Another case of great concept from cool people with big ideas that just happened to be broke. They couldn't get third-party game companies on board, thus they'd have made no money (the IES would have been sold at a loss, ala MS and Sony).RIP Indrema. You will be sorely missed by this geek.
archangel21xAug 14, 2005
I knew about this system, but I did not know it was built to be open source. Now I am sorry it failed.
instereoAug 14, 2005
^wtf..
vholdAug 14, 2005
Linux or not, it just wasn't a very good idea to come out with something like that and call it a 'video game console' in the hypercompetive console arena.Now if it were a PVR, web browser, email, etc, with games as a bonus side effect.. Then you might have a product.. probably not a very popular one, but at least it'd be feasible.
archangel21xAug 15, 2005
"It would have tanked."It did tank....
thegeneralAug 16, 2005
I believe the top selling games are costing somewhere between 5-20 million to produce right now. That number is only increasing in the future. An open source gaming system would probably produce a few niche games with a cult following. But the games would be produced cheaply and could not achieve the same level of play as the bigger manufacturer's offer. Unless they decided to make games for this Linux system...(unlikely)
attackmanAug 18, 2005
Okay, it looks like most of you cats don't remember this thing. I followed it's development closely back then and I was a big mark for it.It didn't work like a typical Linux box. It was more like TiVo, which has a Linux backbone but works more like a kiosk. You'd only see the gaming and MP3 dashboard. No compiling, no messing with drivers, nothing crazy. You don't have to configure drivers on the X-Box, do you? Nope, and that bad boy runs some weird Windows variant.The idea was to have affordable gaming hardware that used open code. You could get a dev kit cheap and make your own stuff for it. Imagine an X-Box that was open to homebrew out of the box. We'd have seen ports of X-Mame, Tux Racer and MPlayer quickly. No need for modding (hard or soft) or crazy hacks.Sadly, it never saw the light of day. Another case of great concept from cool people with big ideas that just happened to be broke. They couldn't get third-party game companies on board, thus they'd have made no money (the IES would have been sold at a loss, ala MS and Sony).RIP Indrema. You will be sorely missed by this geek.