NUON is basically what's left of the unreleased Indrema L600 console developed by VM labs. Basically after VM decided that it in no way could challenge Sony's dominance in the games market they took their technology and licensed it out to several different companies who incorporated it into their DVD players. So in addition to high end DVD playback features like smooth, seamless scanning of DVD video, 20 X zoom, action capture, angle view, smart matrix, and snap shot, Nuon DVD players have the added benefit of playing games.

Unfortunately Nuon never really caught on and Nuon players were only produced for a few years. There are only twelve Nuon games out there, A-Maze, Tempest 3000, Iron soldier 3, Freefall 3050 A.D., Crayon Shin Chan (Korea only,) Ballistic, Space Invaders XL, Monopoly, Myst, The Next Tetris, Bust a move 4, and Merlin racing, and about 11 more which are unreleased but have found their way onto the net and can be downloaded or traded for. Most Nuon players also come with the Video Light Machine built in (which is one of those programs that gives a light show when you play music.)

My guess is that price had something to do with it; Most people shopping for DVD players could really care less if it can play games or not and aren't willing to spend $229 for a machine with features they are never going to use, while gamers go with the traditional consoles (since Ps2 and X-box can play DVDs as well anyway.) Still a hard core group of Nuon people is hanging on and will make sure Nuon doesn't go away for the foreseeable future at least.

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