A combination console and
DVD player, conceived before the
Playstation 2, yet occupying a subtly different area of the market.
The Playstation 2 is built around powerful, gutsy processors and is a self claimed 'step to the next level'. The Nuon is built around cheap processors, with the intention of being so affordable that you can have a Nuon processor in almost every DVD player released.
Through ubiquity, VM Labs the company behind the Nuon, hoped to gain substantial market penetration and from there significant impact on the future of DVD. Nuon offers, among other features, the possibility of providing 'Nuon enhanced' DVD's, packed with additional bells and whistles.
Of course, so far this is but a dream. While no sales figures have been provided for Nuon enhanced consoles, scuttlebutt would indicate that the sales have been somewhat less (by a factor of 10, at least) than sales of the PS2. With so much ground lost, and with so few DVD players offering Nuon capability, it seems that things can only go downhill for the Nuon from here.
The one good thing about a Nuon? Jeff Minter's Tempest 3000 is one of the finest twitch games to be released this year, and perhaps this decade.