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Indrema Dead in 30 Days?
missingmatterboy writes "Red Herring has an article on the current state of John Gildred's Indrema, and it doesn't look great. Without an investment in the next month or so, only the prototype will ever get finished, much less any completed units." Lots of lofty ideas, but you can only produce vapor for so long before exposing your soft fleshy belly. It sure looked like it could have been something tho.
Can Indrema Beat Microsoft To the Punch?
Posted by timothy on Sunday March 19, @06:59PM from the please-don't-be-vapor dept. taggedfordeletion was one of the many, many readers to beseige us with news of the announcement from a company called Indrema of their Indrema L600E set-top box, a Linux-based gaming machine. Actually, it promises a lot more than gaming -- the company touts it as a "Web console" that will also serve as a Web browsing platform and (wonder of wonders) MP3 jukebox. As taggedfordeletion points out, "The Internet capabilities of the box are especially promising, including support for DSL and cable modems." Console gaming is a harshly competitive field, though, with Sony, Nintendo, and Sega (soon to be joined by Microsoft) clawing for reputation, marketshare and all-important game sales. Don't forget that three major players (Sega, Nintendo, Sony) can make a claim that neither Microsoft or Indrema can: their consoles exist, sell, and make people happy. A Playstation in the hand offers utility that "upcoming" devices can't match.
Still, it looks like the so-called X-Box from Microsoft is the machine Indrema's box would be running against, assuming that both of them actually reach the market. Similar specs and expansion capabilities mean that either could be enough computer for people interested primarily in games and getting online, who are looking for no more than a single no-hassle combination of these. That's why the Indrema machine isn't being sold as a gaming device, but rather as a Web Console, with copious references to "the future of TV."
The game-box as everything-box market has been promised for years, and keeps turning out to be either unsatisfying and limited (WebTV), or Yet Another Gaming Machine, despite promises to the contrary. Remember the ColecoVision ADAM? The real question seems to be whether a Linux-based console from an unknown company can survive in the gaming marketplace; after that we can worry about whether it will replace recipe books in the kitchen and the cable box in the living room. After all, that "everthing console" isn't technically impossible; it's just always fizzled as PCs have surpassed the jack-of-all-trades game machines in usefulness, if not in sizzle.
Now, for a minute, forget technical brilliance, forget flexibility, forget how cool it would be to run Linux on your bedside table. Think money, instead.
Microsoft's R&D budget is bigger than the GNP of many nations in the world. The Men In Redmond have enough marketing money to buy Superbowl advertising without batting an eye. You can bet when the X-Box launches, it will have been preceded by a canny stream of attention-building hype, that it will look sexy, and that it will sell at a carefully chosen price aimed at moving it as fast as they can be cranked out and still maximize profits. Likewise, Sega, Sony and Nintendo all have plenty of market savvy and established infrastructure, right down to magazines, distribution networks and strategically-released hints and easter eggs. Not only that, but they each have a hefty stable of games, including Hollywood-names and weird-but-true fandom games like Pokemon, as well legions of rabid fans to play them and design houses to keep 'em coming. It would take a hefty treasure chest (or a lot of faith) for a newcomer in the game market to get the kind of pop-culture deal that sells games based on Star Wars, The X-Files or even Barbie.
Now think money again, but in a different way. An open-source OS may save Indrema a few dollars per box in making the console, but since the guts of the machine they describe include 100Mb ethernet and loads of other ports, a 600MHz processor, and an optional hard drive, its price will probably be in line with that of the X-Box. That is to say, probably overlapping the price range and capabilities of low-end PCs, and without the same economies of scale that Microsoft will likely generate. Even so, since gaming consoles have traditionally been loss-leaders to sell high-margin games, will an open-OS machine be used to play primarily commercial, proprietary games?
If that's the case, then Indrema will have to scramble to provide enough hot-selling games to subsidize console sales. The Sony Playstation 2, already out in Japan and due in the US next fall, boasts more than 160 registered developers worldwide. And since it plays the first generation Playstation games as well, players can choose from more than 3,000 games. By contrast, the leap from NES to Nintendo 64 may have been too great for generational compatibility to have played much of a role, something that Sony has obviously learned from. Microsoft, meanwhile, may not have as large a signed-on group, but carries enough clout (and waves enough cash) in the PC gaming industry to ensure at least a handful of blockbuster games early on. Against that kind of competition, any new entrant is playing catch-up ball.
In fact, there's little indication of what games the Indrema system would play. The box is listed as including Quake 3 Arena / Unreal Tournament, but the Indrema site lists no other game possibilities. And since it touts a "special 'DV Linux' distribution," it's unclear which games will run out-of-box. The X-box is planned to run only games written specifically for it; avoiding that fate seems tricky, since games on every platform except those written for a particular console have a way of sneakily requiring more or different resources than you've got in the box. And if the Indrema machine should have complex enough of an interface to allow users to easily modify directories, install packages and otherwise tweak the contents of that optional hard drive, would it be able to retain the ease of use the console market thrives on?
On the other hand, perhaps packaged games aren't the point at all. Every major player in the console industry is selling their systems' networkability, whether by dialup modem or broadband. Microsoft's interest in WebTV -- and the pay-per-month online games now available -- may be a taste of where the console makers would really like their revenue to come from: a captive audience willing to pay not only for games or other applications, but for access to them. Repeat business and low margins have sold billions of hamburgers, after all. It's plausible that Indrema will offer servers featuring games exclusive to monthly subscribers, or on a per-game basis.
Indrema's nearly breathless Web site hints at a Winter 2000 release: "expected to ship in time for Christmas." That's well before the X-Box is slated to ship, according to this ActiveNetwork comparison of the Sony Playstation 2 and the X-box. I hope they're right, because it seems like a head start might be the only hope for survival against the big-name establishment.
Can Indrema Beat Microsoft To the Punch?
I think we all know the answer to this one.
What I see here is probably some point of what may be wrong with our community.
Most of us are here and expect. Expect that programs are made, expect that bugs are fixed, expect that tools come out to the market.
This is wrong.
We should not expect. We should also participate. Ok, not everyone, nearly anyone has experience with programming or administration or whatever. But sincerly it is better to give a lamer's report of something wrong rather than expecting that the author will guess that something is wrong. I found a few cases when some general error was not reported because everyone expected omeone else to report it... So let's be a little more active ok?
On what concerns such ventures as the one we see here. They need money. Isn't anyone ready to help them? If there will be a mechanism to support these guys I will give my money. Even if I am in Russia. Little but more than nothing. I would help these guys develope this card and even sell it to me. There were such cases in the wild past. One such case happened almost at the same time when Linux was created. Some engineer colected money and technical recomendations to design a sound card. Ok one may ask why I should pay for it if i already invested on it. But there are the production costs and marketing and everything else. You may not pay for the whole price but still help these guys making a great product.
People, let's not expect that corps or investors will care for such ventures. They won't. 90% of them are worried more about finances, money and profit, rather then on the creation of a new technical wonder. It is correct that this wonder should also prove it's worth to market. But that is a risk that we should take into ourselves. If we want to create an independent, autonomous and self-sufficient industry, capable to support and protect our values, we should start to risk money. I believe that this is a risky but honourable venture. And I believe that those who are in the critical sectors of our industry should start thinking about this. This will be something like those merchants who gathered together to build ships and secure their cargos. Note that these ventures, these "corporations" were the basis from which a certain United States of America was created... I am not American and I do see in a very critical view the USA. But still it was a great venture and a great step for Mankind what was done.
It was only a bunch of merchants who started such thing. We are just a bunch of users.
As an aside, what's with all these windows lovers complaining about biases on /.? Yeah, we're fucking biased as hell, and always have been, so why go here when there are plenty of other sites that don't have our editorial slant?
The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
Dreamcast died and it was an excellent machine.
Indrema was a brand new company trying to break into the industry. Its only major advantage over the competition was the linux OS. And (this isn't a flame, but I'm sure it'll be taken as one) having a linux OS doesn't make the console more desirable than the others. Its the developers, the games, and the popularity. The console world is a lot different than the PC world.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Other things that've been responsible for spoiling the variety and quality of games:
There's always something out there for the less talented, formulaic game designers to latch on to and copy. If it wasn't cloning 3D first-person shooters, it would be cloning 2D side-scrolling platform games or 2D real-time strategy games or...
But from the start I did not think that Indrema had a good chance. Being "linux-based" isn't a magic pill to get things popular. Sure it has a lot of cool features, but a large part of what they were relying on was the hype surrounding linux. On a game console, this doesn't buy them all that much functionality wise. It may be different if there was a large number of linux based video games, but there aren't. They were trying to enter a market deeply entrenched by the likes of Sony and Nintendo. A very necessary resource to have a chance of breaking into that market would involve really deep pockets, like Microsoft has. Indrema couldn't afford to lose as much money as they would need on the console itself yet, no way they could afford a good marketing campaign. Now they are down to the hope of last minute investors in a economy that is going downhill. Maybe they could have done something much earlier, if they timed it just right, when the media was super-hyping linux, economy was booming, and there were many investors ready to throw money at all things computer based, but even then I would think they would have a snowball's chance in hell of success. Too bad, it would've been nice to have been proved wrong. They did seem to be getting a quality product developed that would've been techincally superior to most other things out there, but as we have seen many times before, quality isn't the only factor...
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
"It sure looked like it could have been something tho."
A console by a company with no reputation, no serious financial backers, no experience, and no large parent firm, and you thought it could have been something? Why? Because it ran Linux? Linux was the only thing Indrema ever had going for them, because it was a great buzzword.
If anything, the Linux community should be glad to see Indrema go. People who use Linux to fund their cash-burning startups and never produce anything do little to advance the cause.
Bravo for the idea, and I would've LOVED to see the indrema happen, but the chips were stacked against them from the beginning.
"...but you can only produce vapor for so long before exposing your soft fleshy belly."
Maybe they should have used this on the marketing brochures.
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