I don''t know if anybody has seen this or mentioned it before - saw it on TechTV a few months ago. There''s a console called the indreama coming out that seems similiar to the Xbox, but anybody can make games for it. The SDK is free to download, and it''s linux based, opengl, etc. Check it out: http://www.indrema.com Specs look good, but will it survive? Jim Adams Author - Programming Role Playing Games with DirectX

Hmm... the problem is that this console clearly targets developers... in other words, there''ll be more developers than gamers who will buy the console... lack of potential buyers -> lack of big game companies -> lack of good games... plus they''ll have a hard time dealing with piracy. Supporting Mesa3D and OpenGL is a good thing, but Linux... what do they want to do with it ? Isn''t it supposed to be a game console ? Plus, the upgradable GPU option will remove one of the biggest advantage of console development, that is to have static target platform specs. It looks even more like a PC-in-a-box than the X-Box... so in my opinion, if it ever survive, it''ll be as a (cool) developer toy, but not a true gaming console that can compete with the other next-gen consoles.

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"And the number one reason to save your money and buy an Indrema is... Indrema supports independent developers -- so we''ll get all the perverted games." - I like this quote

i dont know if any of yuo are linux buffs, but you remind me of arguments in the linux community about will linux survive etc.
basically, yea.. indrema is aimed at developers. but so what? isnt that kinda nice? i think its a nice idea to have a console made just for us. and, regular people will buy it too. and it will help them become developers. turning the world back into the way it was when all computer users were developers: bliss.

Hmm... well the difference with Linux is that Linux is free, basically, where the console is going to cost some serious bucks in my opinion. And the PC market is different from the console market... because there''s a lot less developers than gamers, and also, not everybody can make a next-gen 3D game on his own. There''s no doubt that developers will buy this, but as for true gamers... if they haven''t bought a Dreamcast of Playstation2 already, there''s still the X-Box and GameCube coming soon, so if you consider that most people are going to buy only one next-gen console, I don''t know if that will leave much chance for the InDreama.

Something like that would have been really cool back in the SNES or even PSX days, but now the console market has evolved into something where you can''t do much without spending huge amounts of cash, so... I''m still a bit pessimistic :|

When X-Box ships, there''s going to be a couple dozen high quality games available. Is the same going to be true for Indrema?

Also, with X-Box, you have people like Mike Abrash, whose job it is to make sure game developers know how to push the hardware to the limits.

Great games are what make or break a console system, and I think X-Box has a good lead in this area.