Whisperings from Indrema

Bill Kendrick writes "John Gildred, CEO of Indrema, participated in an Indrema IRC chat today and gave folks a much-needed update on the L600 console and the company's current state off affairs. Unfortunately, the Big Bad Recession is hitting them as well. John says: "We have experienced our share of dry spells in this difficult economy lately. The situation has not improved. The reality is that we have one last chance to turn it around. There is a plan in motion to obtain interim funding, but [then] I will not have a conclusion until end of this month or early next month." After the update, we had a Q&A session and he mentioned the CPU is now spec'd at 750MHz, and will use a GeForce3. And if they do go belly up, they'll probably release a lot of their code as "LGPL or the like." I've already got his update online at my Indrema fan site."

Comments

Too much competition already...

[Drakino]

Better they leave the game early instead of going under after pushing a few thousand units through manufacturing. The Dreamcast, PS2, GameCube and XBox will have enough of a hard time keeping in there as it is. The Dreamcast console just proves this. And a company who has no estlablished roots to live off of like Microsoft, or who has never done a console already like Sony and Nintendo expects to survive?

The XBox will fill the need for a PC console, the GameCube will hold over the kiddies, and the PS2 will hold over everyone else while the Dreamcast fades away.

Re:Too much competition already...

[nathanh]

... a company who has no estlablished roots to live off of like Microsoft, or who has never done a console already like Sony and Nintendo expects to survive?

Why not? The Colecovision came out of nowhere - from a company who originally built water tanks and snow mobiles - to briefly dominate the home console market. And this was despite competition from the well known and (then) hugely successful Atari.

Of course, this was back during the videogame boom and the Colecovision was clearly better than the competition. The Indrema is basically the same hardware as the Xbox only without the developer backing and without the bigname titles. I don't disagree with you: the Indrema looks like a dead duck. I'm just saying that "established roots" or prior success has little to do with it. History proves this over and over again in the videogames arena.

Indrema at E3

[BIGJIMSLATE]

Indrema's only chance of survival is if they make a showing, a STRONG showing at this years E3 Expo. And as of now, Indrema is NOT listed as an exhibit at E3. Hm...not a good idea. Not a good idea at all.

Why aren't they there? Who the hell knows? Its only the biggest gaming expo in the country with tens of thousands of members of the press reporting on the biggest and best things to come in the next 12 months of console gaming. Its only the expo where Bill Gates is going to have his chance to "sell" his machine to the public, and for Nintendo to try and regain people who were displeased with the N64.

At last years E3, I had the luck of watching Konami show their Metal Gear Solid 2 trailer, and almost a year later, people are STILL asking to borrow my promo dvd that its on. E3 can make that much of an impression on gamers, and Indrema is ignoring it.

I want this console to survive, TRUST me, I do. But there's no way it can unless it gets some press. And if its not mentioned in any gaming mags, barely any websites, and almost none of the print/tv media, where are these people even going to HEAR about it? Unfortunately, your average gamer isn't a /.'er, and most of them have almost no knowledge of the system at all.

If anyone working on the Indrema is reading this...REGISTER for E3! What have you got to lose? You'll only be showing your hardware off to a good 30,000-40,000 software developers, investors, and members of the press, who are people with video cameras just itching to upload the coolest videos they shot that day.

best hope for indrema

[geomcbay]

Face it, the indrema is never going to be a mass-market console. There's no easy way for them to get out of the chicken and egg problem of developers vs number of installed users. Developers aren't beating down the door to get at the technology because its pretty much just PC tech (as is XBox..but indrema doesn't have Microsoft's marketing power, or hundreds of millions of dollars to spend on launch). And since the only games available for it will be PC ports (the best of which will also be ported to the XBox), the users arent going to bite.

Indrema's only real hope, IMO, is to position itself not as yet another console, but as a cool TV-capable programmable device for hobbyist programmers and the tech savvy. (TiVO-ish functionality, which they seem to be doing to some degree, is good as well). While there is hobbyist development (both via pure reverse engineering and illegally obtaining developer software) for other consoles, having one where it is fully encouraged would be pretty cool. With such a system, there's sure to be ports of cool emulators and small but perhaps creative indie games.

In short, Indrema should position itself more as Yaroze and less as Playstaton. Of course, this may be a losing battle too, as it would require selling the hardware for a profit most likely (since there won't be many distribution royalties to be had)... But at least they would have some glimmer of hope. A pure console play is doomed, whether the thing runs linux or not (hint: 99.99% of console buyers don't know anything about linux other than the human interest stories they read on some tech news sites).

Re:best hope for indrema

[Jace of Fuse!]

The Indrema, for better or worse, really only had the interest of the Linux community anyway.

If developers started bashing X-Box bits around with Linux instead of the Windows 2000 Kernal, the Indrema's only selling point would be lost. (And that could happen anyway).

The worst part is, that history shows that people tend to focus on Duality. A single pair of opposing forces. This Yin-Yang tendecy is reflected everywhere in most cultures, and it's been ever apparent in the video game market.

There are at any given time only two real contenders, sometimes 3 with two strong and one sinking fast.

(SNes, Genesis, TG-16)
(Game Boy, Game Gear, Turbo Express)
(N64, Playstation, Saturn)

Now we have Dreamcast, Game Cube, Playstation 2, X-Box, and Indrema(pfft).

There will only be two that do well, and I have two sets of answers.

The first is the ones I'm cheering for, which would be the Game Cube and Dreamcast, but I'm kind of a video game purist, so I know this isn't a realistic guess.

The realistic view is the Game Cube and the X-Box, mostly because Sony is really screwing up the Playstation 2 in the same way Sega screwed up the Saturn. Dreamcast has Sega killing it, and even if 3rd party Dreamcast units do start to show up it will be too little too late. That's not to say if you have a Dreamcast already that there won't be some awesome new games for it, there are many to come, but it's days sadly ARE numbered.

With a market this saturated, Indrema never had a chance. Not even if the market were booming. And even if it were booming, there could be as many as three doing really well, and three still may do well, but it would be the first time. It's VERY unrealistic to even hope that the Indrema might be one of those three in that off chance.

It's more realistic to think that the Dreamcast would, esspecially if 3rd parties begin producing DVD Capable Dreamcast boxes (a real possibility, actually.)

This is a long winded post, even for me, but I'll finish it by giving my quick points as to why I think the Playstation 2 will ultimately not do as well as the Playstation 1.

* The PS1 is cheap and plays all Playstation 1 games.
* The PS2's DVD capabilities are disappointing to many and just adequate for the rest. DVD enthusiasts already have a real DVD player, though. So DVD isn't a selling point anymore.
* Sony still relies on 3rd parties for the majority of their best titles (what few outstanding ones there are, anyway). Most of devs are largely displeased with the PS2 for either liscense reasons or technical reasons. Nintendo always has Link, Mario, and Samus, and Microsoft already has potentially every dev who has ever touched DirectX.
* The PS2's high price will come down, but it's not going to get any easier to develope for, not even if Sony upsthe memory specs in a revision of the console as many people seem to suspect they may do.
* Lastly - Let them up the specs. That would piss off the people who already own one. You can divide a market with a new console, but NEVER try to divide a market with the same console. Non-technical people don't buy into "system specs" on a game console.

"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"

They're marketing it all wrong

[Stick666]

It looks like they're trying to go head to head with the major consoles, which won't work. They'll have to market the things that this console over other consoles that will appeal to people such as:

• Free games. Everyone loves something for nothing. Games are far too expensive these days, parents may buy it just to save money. Kids may get it cos' they have no money.
• You can make games for it. There are absolutly loads of teens out there who would love start programming games. I first started programming by making games on my old sinclair spectrum. This is an affordable way for kids to do this.
• It doesn't just have to be a games console. I'm sure this thing can do more than just play games. Maybe it could be advertised as a cheap pc if it has the right software.
• Start calling it a hackers system more. All the kids will think they can break into NASA with it, lol.

If they want the mass public to take notice they are gonna have to market this thing as something that has never been seen before.

Re:It looks like they diddn't understand the..

[hattig]

Assume that the device uses a cool version of an Athlon processor - say a mobile Athlon 750MHz. This could cost, ooh, about $40 in quantity in a few months time. Add to this the GeForce3 chip, which in quantity, and in a few months time, etc, could be down to $100. Add decent sound. Add DVD drive $50, and so on.

It all adds up. Even taking the hardware alone, without development costs, etc, you could be looking at $400+. If they were confident of selling 1m Indrema consoles though, then economies of scale kick in and the price goes down to $300 a console. But after 4 months on the market, they have to reduce the consoles price to keep interest high. Selling at $200. Still making a loss.

However, by this time 750MHz mobile Athlons could be even cheaper - maybe even bin parts that couldn't make 900MHz, and would normally be chucked. This could reduce the cost even more.