Founded in early 2000 by John Gildred, Indrema's goal was to create a video game console based on common PC hardware and the open-source Linux operating system. A couple of the unique aspects of the console was that it would have been the only open-source console on the market, as well as the only modern console to allow free software to be written for it.
The console was expected to be released by the holiday season of 2000, but rather than an official announcement, those subscribed to Indrema's mailing list received instead a "top ten" list in the style of David Letterman. By this time, people were beginning to suspect that the console was vaporware, for all Indrema had produced to date were press releases.
A lack of a product and sufficient capital contributed to Indrema's demise. After being unable to raise to keep the company alive, Indrema shut down on April 6, 2001. In his last Indrema chat session, Gildred revealed that the company needed more than $10,000,000 in capital in order to continue and gave the following advice to the next video game startup: "finish product before talking about it."
Had the Indrema L600 console been released, it would have costed $300 US and had 30 games available at launch.
Gildred now works at Pioneer Research Center, where he is developing a next-generation interactive DTV platform.
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