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Indrema No More
Captain_Frisk writes: "According to videobusiness.com - Indrema is officially dead It's a shame, but was there really room for it anyway? The article basically says that they ran out of money, and had to jump ship. The founder has found employment with a Japanese electronics company, and plans to create a similar device, without game support. They said they would release their code if they went under... wonder if this changes any of those plans." And it won't be the last time that a company with seemingly cool products expires people even get to sample those products. We've had a few stories about Indrema before, including an interview with CEO John Gildred. What I'm curious about now is what happens to the games in development, and whether the SDK is useful for producing non-Indrema Linux games.
I believe it was better that this console died now, instead of facing the grim market reality it would have brought itself to: the fact that no one would buy it, because they've never heard of it.
Forget that the company was just started. Forget that they are using a "controversial" operating system. Forget that they were going to use an entirely new model for their business. Forget that letting any developer in the world develop for a console.
But don't forget that they would be competing against Microsoft and Sony. And, don't forget that they would be competing with both companies on two fronts: developers and consumers.
Note that I didn't count Nintendo due to the intended audience. I doubt many games targeted toward a young audience would have been developed for Indrema, since they are typically large-name labels (i.e., Pokemon and other cartoons).
Developers want a system that's easy to code for, sure. I mean, what's easier than a system where you have access to the operating system? However, developers also want a box that's basically proven to have a large user base (Sony) or proven to have the muscle to have a large user base (Microsoft + $500 Million marketing campaign == Xbox shoved down everyone's throat).
That brings up consumers. If you went up to the average person on the street and asked what a Playstation is, I'm sure you'd get a good response. Ask them what Xbox is, and maybe you'll get a good response (not as much as Playstation though). Ask them what Indrema is, and they might think it's some vehicle for space flight or something like that.
Make no mistake: Indrema would have died on the shelves of average retailers, who have tons of promotional material for other game consoles. If Indrema didn't show them some love as well, they may not even have gotten shelf space.
It was a great idea, it just had no market feasibility to make money.
- A.P.
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Forget Napster. Why not really break the law?
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Don't believe me? Look how well Microsoft's done in the handheld arena.
- A.P.
--
Forget Napster. Why not really break the law?
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
To install CLI, no. To get a GUI working, yes.
(or at least that was the case the last time I tried Slackware, which was v3.0 with XFree86 v3.x).
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Umm, the only times I've posted in this forum about Indrema in the past were to mention how it was unlikely to ever be released. And I was right. =]
Linux is not the be-all end-all of operating systems.
[I personally have deleted all vestiges of Linux from my system due to it pissing me off to no end]
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
The problem with Indrema is that their plans did not include the very latest cutting edge graphics technology. That's right - if only they'd designed their console around the Bitboys XBA 3d chipset, I'm sure there would have been plenty of buzz, and they'd have had no trouble getting further funding!
(also, I think AROS would make a more suitable console OS than Linux)
there is a *huge* difference though. Sony is a very large company with enough money to develop the console and pay for the advertising campaign. Even before Playstation, every Joe Shmoe knew what Sony is. The very name of the company is usually associated with quality, though overpriced, products. Now tell me who knows what Indreama is. The name of the company is interesting though -- kind of underscores that it existed only in a dream.
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If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
Heck, it could even be made into an actual product, if anyone's left to develop it. I'd buy the bloody thing...
Seriously. Having linux doesn't magically make your product for you. Especially if your product is hardware!
Oh, and sorry about the -1, Flamebait. What can I say? The moderators are retarded. But that's why I browse at -1.
The enemies of Democracy are
And before you flame me about how wonderful the Linux OS woulda been, think of this: If linux was such a great gaming platform, then I'd expect to find quite a few games for it already.
Why would you expect that? It's a developing market. The number of Linux users is currently small as a market for games, and thus developers are reluctant to target it. Really, the size of the Linux game market has nothing to do with its suitability as a game platform at this point.
The enemies of Democracy are
Um... There were a four games listed as "release titles". Three were Loki ports, and the 4th was Tux Racer.
That's right. Tux Racer.
Now granted Tux Racer is a lot of fun, but when that is one of your biggest-name games you're going to have a hard time generating excitement.
The enemies of Democracy are
They'll be back, again and again, and again.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Erm... the G4 has AltiVec. Not that you're right anyway.
The Gekko chip is a G3, with its own multimedia enhanced instruction set mode, so yes, it can also do SIMD.
Next off, MS has had to boost XBox specs *because* of GameCube. They don't plan on replacing the XBox for a few years, meanwhile, Sony's already looking at PS3 development. MS is just trying to make the system last a few more years in the long run.
X86 is power hungry and inefficient. As long as they stay tied to all of the backwards compatibility of the chip, they're going to be in trouble.
Next off, no one would dream of coding in full assembly anymore for a game. It's mostly C, even for GameCube, by virtue of it being a desktop CPU. The multitexturing capabilities also work to NGC's advantage, and you have to remember the next thing that Nintendo has going for them. They don't really *need* third party developers to get anywhere. Rare, Game Freak, and a few others can propel them to remarkable success. Hell, they can probably ride another Shigeru Miyamoto hype machine all the way to the bank if things get tough. Microsoft lacks any single brilliant developer, and gamers recognize that level of celebrity. Just like Squaresoft for PS2, or Hideo Kojima for whatever he decided to release (he's the only reason Konami hasn't tanked.)
Finally, even though no one does full blown ASM anymore for a console, partial ASM is still done, and will be, even for XBox. You know why? Raw speed. If you have a stable target, you code as close as you can to the metal to squeeze out all that you can from what you've got. Just ask John Carmack.
X86 doesn't make things easier, just more familiar. Once people realize that MS was right, that the XBox *isn't* a PC, they'll hit the same hurdles that other consoles have felt.
Factoid from Namco's Soul Calibur team: They claimed to have maxed out the Dreamcast's capabilities with SC. To be honest, it's a beautiful game, and they were probably right, or at least very close. They could have just coded targeting CE and DirectX, but didn't. For the same reason, the instant that someone codes an XBox specific 3d engine, it will blow away anything on the PC. It's just like if you write a game that only works on your system. You can rely on things like the read speed of your hard disk, CD-ROM drive, your specific overclocked video cards latency, etc. It will look amazing on your box, and be a lot of C/C++ calling custom ASM routines. But it won't work anywhere else.
XBox will be good. Maybe not great, but it'll work just fine as a games box. That said, I won't buy one until there's a game that I need to play. Zone of the Enders alone made my PS2 worth it. Soul Calibur was nice, but Phantasy Star Online caused me to realize that I can't be without a Dreamcast. And Rogue Squadron managed to sell me not only an N64, but also the rumble pack and memory expansion. I don't see anything that's making me jump to get an XBox.
Raptor
Raptor
"Procrastination is great. It gives me a lot more time to do things that I'm never going to do."
They said that they would release all of their SDK stuff as open source if they went under. Cool, maybe there's some useful stuff there.
What I would like to see are open hardware designs. Some of us may want to build an Indrema or something like it. Chances are, few people will build one (opting for NLX designs instead, but I'm not all that impressed with NLX), but the learning potential is great.
Remember when Compaq open the hardware design of the Itsy? I didn't build one, but I went over the schematics to see how they designed it.
That's what I really would like to see now that there's no hope for me ever buying one from them. I would have been first in line, sigh...
I was looking forward to playing some Indrema games while listening to my Kerbango.
So what you are saying is, that basically what they should have done is marketed it as a computer?
Heh. Here's a concept...
Install a user friendly VCR-Like interface on top of Linux... simple funcitons... load game... play CD/DVD, etc... the stuff we see in most consoles with a few extras.
Then, mount a DVD-CD-R drive in it. Give it four controller ports. Include a Keyboard, Joypad, and Mouse. Then include a disc with a very basic self booting mini-linux distro that comes with a web-browser and some other basic applications. Add an option for an internal IDE Hard Disc.
It would be the C64/Amiga 500 all over again.
If Microsoft had any brains what-so ever, the X-Box would be doing this, too.
Consoles are getting so advanced that soon it will be reasonable expectation for them to do more than just boot games.
With DVD-CD-R combo drives popping out of the woodwork, there's no reason to go with a static ROM disc when a standard FileSystem for re-writable media could be built into a console or OS.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
Well, John Gildred (founder and CEO of indrema) will be on #indrema @ irc.openprojects.net tommorow at 7:30pm EDT (2330 GMT IIRC). That would be wednesday April 11, 2001. He will be explaining exactly what happened, the possibility of an indrema.org (ran by the community, for general linux gaming stuff), and what will happen with the source code. I think it would be nice if everyone came to it, and then started doing all the ranting and flaming. At least the flames will be informed (When I learned of indrema being dead from John earlier today, I cried).
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HAL 7000, fewer features than the HAL 9000, but just as homicidal!
"I'm curious about now is what happens to the games in development"
Nobody was developing any games for Indrema. Why do you think that they could not get funding?
As Evil as Sony is, they at least have a chance of competing on a hype-by-hype basis. I mean, look at that PS9 commercial. By the time the MS X-Box hype machine kicks into overdrive indicating that the X-Box is a mere 2 years out, the PS5 hype will be quite competitive with it.
Let this be a lesson to you: Open source programmers may put out some damn fine quality code, but they can't hype to save their lives.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Well, at least there is only NTSC, PAL, or SECAM, and one standard per country for TVs, nothing like the all the different resolutions, scan rates, etc in the computer world.
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
I remember that they wrote an X server designed for TV screens. Not exactly a "complete" X server but a minimalisitic X server. I'm fairly sure that they had other stuff they programmed themselves, but that's the only thing I can remember off the top of my head.
No. That isn't really what I meant. Mostly I was just trying to say that I admired the way they believed they could do it, even though from square one everyone said that if they didn't have a billion dollars to spend in initial production and another billion to spend in advertising then they couldn't suceed.
But they were sort of going to market it as a computer. The thing could play MP3's and movies and you could surf the internet with it.
What I liked about the hardware, that I thought could be applied to other comptuers was the modularity. Unlike, most consoles theirs was upgrade-able. You just unsnap the CPU/motherboard, pull it out, insert a new one and snap it closed. With computer you have to unscrew the cover of the case, unscrew a bunch of other stuff on the inside, muck around, screw everything back in. It's a pain and it's fairly easy to break something or shock it with static electricity.
They had some other fairly cool ideas too.
I read so many comments that act as if Indrema failed because of the competition. But that's not true.
Indrema didn't have any competition because it never reached the market.
The reason Indrema failed is because it couldn't raise any funding to get started.
Sure, if Indrema had produced a finished product, it may well have still failed. But that never happenned and so we'll never know. Just because investors don't like the idea doesn't mean it's not a good one. Remember these are the same morons who bought Internet Grocery stock last year.
Actually... I doubt that if I had money I would invest in Indrema. But I still think they're pretty cool. They dreamed big. Some of their ideas about where computers were going were pretty inciteful. Imagine computers so easy to use your grandmother could upgrade the hard drive or add ram. It will be another 7 years before we start seeing that kind of half decent design in ordinary PC's.
From their IESDK description:
I'm willing to bet that they can make good on their bet to release everything the developed as open source...there's probably nothing to release.
Curmudgeon Gamer: Not happy
Your points are completly valid, I agree with all of them, however sony fucked up big with the playstation 2 and the shit will hit the fan financially. A choice between a gamecube or xbox and indrema might be in order.
This Wiki Feeds You TV and Anime - vidwiki.org
The XBox, featuring Windows 2000, seems to have developed a lot of momentum, despite being a network operating system. Anyway, how do you play online games without network capability?
Tell me what makes you so afraid
Of all those people you say you hate
It didn't have any big game developers or publishers set to write games for it.
The system was going to try to break into a market where veteran Sega just failed.
Its only major advantage was the linux OS (if you even call this an advantage).
It really isn't surprising that it failed. The market is rough, and you need to have something special to make your mark. Indrema didn't have anything out of the ordinary. And before you flame me about how wonderful the Linux OS woulda been, think of this: If linux was such a great gaming platform, then I'd expect to find quite a few games for it already.
The SDL is still a work in progress. Once this comes to par, we might have something to compete with DirectX, but nothing is ready at this time. Don't give up on the idea of a Linux gaming platform, just keep it on the backburner right now...
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Amigori
"The quality of life is determined by its activites."--Aristotle
What high-titled games did they have coming out for it anyway? I don't see any.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
I'm not surprised, however I'm disapointed that there are not many companies left to compete against the Xbollocks.
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
Indrema - the only video game system that requires you to know the refresh rate of your TV to install :)
An OS on for a game console is like a bike for a fish. Te point of consoles is a standard, low cost set of hardware for mass distribution. The mass distribution makes it attractive to sell to, and the standard hardware makes it attractive to PROGRAM on. Indrema, a console based on Linux just didn't make sense. I'm sorry.
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jX [ Make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler. - Einstein ]
I was very active on the Indrema mailing lists for a significant amount of time and was part of the "core" team of community developers, until I realized it didn't stand a chance and jumped ship. No, this is not a troll.
The first mistake for me was not even having a prototype so many months into "publicity". I wonder what the venture capitalists were thinking when they invested in this company; the least I would expect as a VC is a hacked-up job that demonstrates rudimentary capability to do a base set of the things promised - a wooden box with wires all over the place like the original Apple. Furthermore, instead of immediately concentrating all energies on that (because concerete results improve your credibility and help to keep both you and your supporters motivated) Indrema set up a website making bold proclamations, a community development site (GameXchange) and mailing lists which, due to the lack of definite info, were filled with speculation, OT posts and flame wars.
Next came the buzzwords, terms that were used to hype the development community but were lacking in real meaning. Add indefinite goals and grandiose plans (which could never be fully revealed - I thought this was supposed to be Open Source?) with a liberal dose of "confidentiality", such as not being able to list interested commercial developers and publishers (perhaps because there were none?)
Indrema was a good idea - not a great one - that was poorly thought through and badly executed. It had little to offer in terms of true industry innovation and new territory other than the premise of independent/hobbyist/freeware games on a console.
Bwahahahaha. Why do you think they went under?
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"Watch these suckers jump when I get Administrator."
Sony loses money on every Playstation sold; Sega was almost dragged under by the Dreamcast. TiVo and WebTV have mandatory service fees. Remember the fuss over the i-Opener hack? You can't sell consumer equipment without guaranteed way to make back the losses.
Indrema had no guaranteed revenue stream. Their income was from game royalties; however, they didn't have any big-name titles lined up. And to attract serious developers would require a sizable user-base, meaning that the consoles would have to be sold underprice (just so they can be competetive) for a long time before the money started coming back in. I can't imagine that anybody would risk investing in a company which guaranteed short-term losses and had only a marginal shot at ever making money back.
Yeah, yeah, you can tell me that you and your friends would have all bought Indremas, but do you really think that these boxes stood a chance at attracting a large number of users? If you were given the choice between a PS2 and an Indrema at the same price, which one would you honestly pick? And if you factor in the brand-name recognition of Sony or Nintendo (in the eyes of Joe Average at least), there's just no hope for the Indrema. (BTW, the only reason the Xbox might succeed is that Microsoft can afford to hemorrage cash for years -- not to mention their serious marketing power.)
So it was a nice idea, sure, but there was just no way it was going to work out in the end. Nobody wants to invest in something that might not ever make money.
If it's linuxen it runs on, I know where I can find a few million of those...
--Blair
Indrema had a superb tech and using Linux gave them the edge to surpass all competition on the technical front. They just did not have the financial backing all the industry titans enjoy. It was a brilliant idea and they guys gave their best. I'm sure it will one day raise like a Phoenix from its ashes and the world will enjoy a Free gaming platform. So please stop trolling about one mishap this little bump along the way to the ultimate glory of the superior OS.
What? Of course I need karma points. Go sue me asshole!
Your pizza just the way you ought to have it.
exactly. another great example is the recent shortcomings of the agenda vr3. while microsoft(key darth vader music) said they would have some program where anybody could make xbox games, indrema prog hopefuls could actually making games whereas xbox garage developers would probably have to pay 97.5% of their games earnings to bill(key music again). hopefully they will release the code, it would be really helpful to people who want to learn how to make games.
. the world is my toilet - chris mooney