This ambitious console was to compete with the PS2 and Xbox by offering this new feature: unfortunately it will never see the light of day

Game news This ambitious console was to compete with the PS2 and Xbox by offering this new feature: unfortunately it will never see the light of day

Small, but full of ambition

It has never been easy to enter the home console market, nor to keep your place there. At the beginning of the 2000s, SEGA hung up its gloves to become a third-party publisher while Microsoft rushed in with its Xbox : the American brand Indrema, an electronics company, had also attempted an incursion with its Indrema L600. Presented in 2000, the machine had the particularity of being based on Linux : it was also intended to be a real entertainment center with a CD and DVD player, but also a web browser and even a video recorder. She even wanted to offer high definition up to 1080i: a very avant-garde resolution since it was supposed to be released at the end of 2000.

With the flexibility of Linux, the Indrema L600 even wanted to offer regular developer gamers their own games by providing a development kit, also with the possibility of updating its GPU. Inside, there was an AMD Durib processor clocked at 750 MHz as well as an Nvidia GeForce 3 GPU, with 64 MB of RAM. Even more impressive: a 10 GB hard drive was plannedexpandable up to 50 GB.

Dead in the bud

However, things did not go as planned for Indrema, who ultimately postponed his machine until the summer of 2001 at the earliest. Its launch price was set at $299an extremely competitive price given its very advanced technical characteristics, while it was to accommodate 30 games at launch. The problem, is that Indrema will not have succeeded in raising enough capital to mass produce the console. It must be said that on the other hand, the market was already saturated by a PlayStation 2 with astonishing success, without forgetting the return of Nintendo with its Gamecube in 2001 and the resounding arrival of Microsoft with its Xbox the same year.

Due to lack of sufficient financial funds, the Indrema company therefore closed its doors on April 6, 2001, less than a year and a half after its founding. The L600 therefore remains only an unfinished project, which nevertheless praises a past era which should remember some good memories for some.

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