Phantom Game Console Presentation

superultra writes "Glaximus has posted an impressions piece on Penny-Arcade of one of Infinium Lab's first press conferences. Most notable is that which Gabe, of Penny-Arcade fame, also replicates on Penny-Arcade's front page: 'One of the last questions asked was rather direct and perhaps aimed a bit low. "So, I have all my consoles at home, and I have a very powerful PC that plays lots of games and can be upgraded simply by installing new hardware myself. Why would I want to buy a Phantom?" Rob's answer? "Well then you aren't really part of the Phantom's core user base." That got some chuckles from the crowd, sure. But it was Rob's next statement that had the real impact. "See, you people say you have enough consoles, and a powerful PC, but whenever a new console comes out, you people always buy it."' Other details are scarce, except that the release date is now April 2004, and that the Phantom will use highly advanced DMCA techniques such as Epoxy Encapsulation and Case Intrusion Detection. Doing so will, no doubt, provide the Missing Link in Digital Rights Managment."

isn't it obvious?

[sweeney37 (325921)]

So, no games or companies mentioned, no indication of what the launch titles would be, or if there was even any Phantom-exclusive original content planned. When asked directly just who Infinium had in their corner, Rob's reply was interesting: "I can tell you I can't tell you. I can tell you I'd like to tell you. I can tell you who we don't have. Do we have EA? No."

c'mon, why don't they just say it. we all know the launch title is Duke Nukem: Forever, why must they beat around the bush?

Mike

Re:isn't it obvious?

[rsborg (111459)]

Rob's reply was interesting: "I can tell you I can't tell you. I can tell you I'd like to tell you. I can tell you who we don't have. Do we have EA? No."

Jeebus this guy spouts poetry like our esteemed Secretary of Defense [msn.com]... now I'm really scared. Does he know someone named Darl?

I'm seeing some sh*t!

[dswensen (252552)]

I think this comic [penny-arcade.com] , also from Penny Arcade, sums up the Phantom more neatly even than that press release.

Re:PA review

[revmoo (652952)]

Good job, you just linked us to the story attached to these comments.

Reading the article surrenders....

It does not exist!

[DrEldarion (114072)]

I forgot who, but someone actually went to the address they had listed for their headquarters. It turned out to be completely abandoned, not even any furniture or anything. When that person called and asked about it, he was hung up on. That, combined with the fact that most of the screenshots look like they're coming from his GARAGE (there were some tires sitting in the corner) and the fact that there's never any real concrete evidence of this thing actually existing make this thing winner of the Vaporware of the Year award.

-- Dr. Eldarion --

isn't google wonderful?

[mekkab (133181)]

here is the hard "truth" [ferrago.co.uk], or something close enough too it.

HardOCP

[obsid1an (665888)]

This [hardocp.com] is what you are looking for.

Re:It does not exist!

[Hast (24833)]

Well, working out of your garage is quite a good idea which has been largely abandoned during the dotcom era. If you want to keep costs down as you do R&D then it's one of the few sane ways of developing IMHO.

From reading the articles at HardOCP it doesn't look good. (Developing in you garage is fine, supplying a false adress is at best suspicious.

And the entire thing seems like a new version of the DivX DVD-player standard.

If you believe the phantom...

[ferrocene (203243)]

Then I have a 4ghz cpu, 1gb 2ghz DDR ram, 512mb UltraShiny GeForceFX6900++ console called the Enforcer that I'd like to sell you.

Seriously.

We have Max Payne 3.

*smirks*

"You People."

[Rimbo (139781)]

I remember when Ross Perot gave a speech to the NAACP during his presidential campaign, he kept using the phrase, "You people."

The crowd became outright hostile as the speech wore on. I remember hearing one person incredulously shout, "US people???"

I can't imagine the crowd at the presentation reacted any better.

So Infinium believes Us People will buy basically whatever any console manufacturer makes, eh? I guess they're unaware of the Sega Saturn. Or the Atari Jaguar. Maybe they believe Nokia's press releases, and not their in-store sales figures on the N-Gage. I don't know. It seems to me that the video game industry has more failed consoles than successes.

But then, I'm not in the business; I just play games.

Re:"You People."

[Rimbo (139781)]

Yes, of course he's not black. Clinton's not black, either, and he got a lot of votes from African-Americans. If a politician wants a group's votes, he needs to sound like he's either a member of a group, or supports that group's interests.

By constantly saying "You people," the underlying message Perot gave was: "You and me are separate and we're going to stay that way." Compare this to Clinton's "I feel your pain" approach: It said, "I may not be black, but I understand disenfranchisement."

Back to topic, the message Infinium gave with this comment is: "We're not really by gamers for gamers as the company motto says, and we think you'll buy whatever we give you."

Blink, Blink

[swat_r2 (586705)]

The Phantom is to Video Games as the Segway Scooter is to Personal Transportation.

Can't beat free publicity.

Re:Blink, Blink

[dasmegabyte (267018)]

Uh, no. The Segway exists and works and innovates. It's just dumb.

The Phantom is also dumb. But it doesn't exist, doesn't work and even if it did it doesn't innovate. It imprisons. It is mail order only.

This reeks of that Mel Brooks classic, The Producers.

Not quite...

[Faust7 (314817)]

"See, you people say you have enough consoles, and a powerful PC, but whenever a new console comes out, you people always buy it."

We didn't buy the 3D0, TurboGrafx-16, or Jaguar, did we?

uh yeah....

[ferrocene (203243)]

I didn't buy the 3D0, no sir...don't remember playing evil clown driving games at all.

Nope.

Re:Not quite...

[Jacer (574383)]

No but I did buy a 32x! ...I hate myself...

Re:Not quite...

[glitch23 (557124)]

3DO was too expensive so we had good reason not to. The Jaguar had no good games and the ones that were supposed to be good never were released. And I can't speak for the TurboGrafx 16. As a side note, I owned a Jaguar and loved the Tempest 2000 and Iron Soldier games.

Re:Not quite...

[Guppy06 (410832)]

At the time, we weren't even in high school yet, let alone had jobs to buy consoles with. Now that we have jobs and money and free time to kill, we're looking for these consoles on eBay.

Of course, these older consoles aren't the ones that require a broadband connection. That's a good way to slash your target market down to an order of magnitude less than what it could be...

Re:Not quite...

[Babbster (107076)]

Ummmm, I did buy a TurboGrafx-16...Of course, the only two games I played on it were Bonk's Adventure (excellent) and Klax (classic), and I then promptly got rid of it. There was nothing deeply wrong with the system except that it had little to no developer support in the US - which, of course, is deeply wrong. :)

Re:Not quite...

[Ralph Wiggam (22354)]

Fighting Streets (The home version of Street Fighter 1) was the first data CD I had ever seen.

-B

Doesn't sound right

[Crashmarik (635988)]

1.8 GHZ P4 presumably not a celeron
256 mb of ram
80 gig ram
ATX architechture MotherBoard
NV 36 graphics
Controllers

cost $300.00

Definitely looks like an X-box like loss leader, problem is there is no OS included. What are developers going to develop to ? Whats more unless they have a couple billion to drop sales of consoles theres no way they are going to get the developer support on porting the games over.

Maybe their epoxy DMCA scheme could sound nice to developers, but is casual piracy of

Re:Doesn't sound right

[IIRCAFAIKIANAL (572786)]

os is win xp based according to pa article...

Re:Doesn't sound right

[ocelotbob (173602)]

All right, this thing sounds like it's one hundred percent vaporware, but let's play let's pretend for a moment...

You don't need an OS to develop a game. None at all. The only functionality that one would really need is how to talk to the hard disk to store items on it, and that could pretty much all be done through bios calls and a drive with some sort of documented filesystem interface on it. Everything else would be done through programming to the direct hardware, like most game consoles already do. In

Re:Doesn't sound right

[Crashmarik (635988)]

Mea Culpa
One of these days I will learn to proofread.

80 Gig HD

Mandalorian Armor

[Graymalkin (13732)]

Infinium is this year's Indrema. They've got pie in the sky plans and nothing to show for their hype. If you look at all the features Infinium is proposing for the Phantom it starts to look a lot like an updated L600 from Indrema. The hype for the Phantom actually looks like a cross between Lindows.com's and Indream's hype. It's like the marketoids from both companies got together in a conclave of absurdity.

I want to feel bad for anyone who invests in this flop. I find it exceedingly difficult however because they're painfully stupid. Hopefully the people backing Infinium married well so there's a chance their offspring to end up with decent genes.

I am laughing

[salesgeek (263995)]

Lets see Pentium VI, Windows XP, nVidia Card etc...

Sounds like a PC. Too bad the general purpose version is pretty damn cheap anyway.

I think all these opportuneurs don't get it:

The general purpose computer will eventually price crush the game box.

Re:I am laughing

[Qrlx (258924)]

The general purpose computer will eventually price crush the game box.

it may price crush them (it's close to that now) but it is nowhere closer to having three things:

1. appliance-style instant-on "plug and play" -- instead you have to load the OS then install the game, then load the game, and so many things can go wrong there.

2. unified controller architecture (man the buzzwords) so that game developers don't have to worry about which version of Microsoft Sidewinder you're going to use, or maybe you'll just use the keyboard and a trackball or what have you.

3. "franchise" games like Nintendo's Mario, oh so popular with the young 'uns.

Now, what the PC does have, is mods. I think that's the big weakness of Xbox live and all that, there's no ability for the community to "embrace and extend" as it were. Kinda ironic, but not surprising. The PC is an open architecture computer, the game consoles are closed-architecture appliances.

Re:I am laughing

[dasmegabyte (267018)]

Uh huh. And the game box will continue to better-game-crush the PC. Developers LIKE the game box because there are good sales of even the shittiest games while a shitty game on a PC might not recoup enough to pay one or two developers.

But it's easier to make a game for PC. Shit, games for other consoles are WRITTEN on the PC. So the pressure is on to find a way to make PC gaming profitable.

Hence, X-box. And ain't no way MS is giving that up to this idiot and his glow-box.

i know where to get one

[by Anonymous Coward]

It is right next to the snowball in hell. So just fly down there in your hovercars and get one.

(Note to the well read, i dont mean Dante's hell.)

Full Sail!

[BitwizeGHC (145393)]

The article mentioned this presentation took place at Full Sail. Full Sail [fullsail.com], the alma mater of Imari Stevenson, a school which also received accolades from the Romero, is also hosting a Phantom promo? Ever notice how everything sucky about the game industry seems to cluster together?

I used to imagine Full Sail as the kind of place that would ask you essay questions like "The President has been kidnapped by ninjas! Are you a bad enough dude to rescue the President?" on its application forms. Then I went here [fullsailsucks.com]

heh

[revmoo (652952)]

So, am I the only one planning on buying one and raping it for parts?

A P4, 80gig hard drive and some ram all for $300 eh? Not bad :-)

Re:heh

[Cylix (55374)]

nah, if we can flash it back to a normal pc, I'll turn it into a PC PVR/Game station.

Re:heh

[Cylix (55374)]

Woh,

That's a little over kill buddy!

I have a sneaking suspcion they aren't going to submerge this thing in epoxy. that would be a little expensive and probably an utter pain when slapping it together. They probably intend to glue the cards in or something silly.

Your just crazy enough to make it to my friends list, welcome aboard buddy!

ya know

[downix (84795)]

The idea is not bad, but you need to obey the first rule of business:

Know your Market.

A broadband fed video game console is not exactly new, ya know. (Sega's SegaNet for the Genesis, JagNet for the Atari Jaguar, etc) Neither is DRM technology. (Those of you that cracked Commodore games can now raise your hand, thank you all)

The video game market is really filled with thrill junkies. Looking for their latest fix. Weither that is Donkey Kong Country or Final Fantasy X-II, in the end, "It's the games, stupid."

If they can't name a single game, they're grasping at straws. A joke in an ATX case.

Site is already, slow, so here's the article text.

[bo0ork (698470)]

Phantom Impressions

By Glaximus [mailto]

The Presentation

A crowd of about 300 had gathered in one of Full Sail's larger classrooms for the monthly meeting of the Orlando chapter of the International Game Developers Association. Our guest speakers for the night were Infinium Labs, the company behind the oft-maligned and highly mysterious Phantom console. They were cautious with information, and while they did spill some details about the system, it's hardware, and their business model, they left a lot of critic

Games are Not His Focus

[ewhac (5844)]

This guy is not building a gaming platform. He's building a cable decoder.

Cable companies would like nothing more than to rent you immersive, persistent entertainment. ("Sell? That's so last millennium.") Problem: Cable boxes today are pitifully stupid due to the drive to keep costs low; they have no local storage. Also, they've learned the hard way, both through their spastic "Interactive TV" initiatives and their broadband internet offerings, that there's no way they can serve interactive games without intolerable download waits from the head end.

What they want is a PC that the subscriber can't modify in any way. It looks like the Phantom guys propose to build this.

Or, they could just be a bunch of flakes out to put over an obvious hoax on the industry. (Please support our "phantom" console, ha ha...)

Schwab

Infineum business plan

[mekkab (133181)]

1)hype console
2) Depend upon the utterance "You people buy every console there is."
3) Profit!

Yes folks! They have revealed the elusive and often obfuscated STEP 2!

Hallelujia! No longer do I have to steal underpants [geocities.com] to build a business!

April of 2004?

[Qzukk (229616)]

That wouldn't happen to be April 1, 2004, would it?

Enron Economics

[banzai75 (310300)]

... and be ready, tentatively, for a Q1 2004 release-- about April or so.

If I remember correctly, April would be in Q2.

Actually

[geekoid (135745)]

it doesn't have to be. You can start you're business year anytime.

Pssh... epoxy THIS.

[MP3Chuck (652277)]

Who wants to bet they get Linux running on it within a month of its release...

Re:Pssh... epoxy THIS.

[DigiShaman (671371)]

For the die-hard geeks around the world. This is EXACTLY the kinda system we want to hack. If it's "unhackable" then it WILL get hacked. Plus, it will be a shinning example to the rest of the industry to not invest so much on consumer lock-down. But rather, invest the same amount in quality control.

This is Going to Tank

[Prien715 (251944)]

First of all, this is basically an easy-to-use version of a PC. The AOL of PCs if you will that plays already existent console games.

Secondly, what if your area doesn't have broadband? Doesn't about 50% of the US still use modems?

And finally, no memory card, no disk drive. You want your friend to borrow your game? No problem. Give him the whole console. Want to trade save games. Same thing. There's a reason we have disk drives and memory cards, this is it.

So where does that leave our audience? I guess that means anyone who has broadband, doesn't have a good PC, and doesn't like to play console games with friends.

Any takers?

Just who is the target audience for this thing???

[sllim (95682)]

It isn't the early adopters. The early adopters are fascinated by bigger, better and faster. This whole epoxy glue and tamper-resistent case thing will turn those early adopters off big time.
They are going to see a box that is screaming for more memory, faster bus speed or a bigger CPU. But unless you can get around the tamper-resistent case (probably) you risk turning it into a useless pile of junk by doing so.

It certainly isn't parents shopping for a Christmas present. So you are telling me that I ca

I know how they are gonna make money on this.

[sllim (95682)]

Mark my words. My name is Sllim, and you read it here first.

This is smart. Really, really smart.

And they have already alluded to it several times.

And it is gonna work too.

They are not even humoring themselves on making money on the console. No sir.
They are gonna make money on the digital rights managment feature.
Or rather, they are baiting another company to put epoxy over there chips and to put a tamper switch on the case of there console.
Know what they do when that happens?
Nothing.
Wait a couple of

Smoke, Mirrors, and the Bomb

[Mulletproof (513805)]

"I have all my consoles at home, and I have a very powerful PC that plays lots of games and can be upgraded simply by installing new hardware myself. Why would I want to buy a Phantom?"

Rob's answer? "Well then you aren't really part of the Phantom's core user base."

Well, it's nice to know console and PC gamers aren't their target audience. I mean, God forbid you'd want to tap that user base.

That's great except for this article...

[GamezCore.com (631162)]

As a member of the videogame industry, I have been following this new "console" quite closely. I came across this article at http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NTEy [hardocp.com] and it opened my eyes to just how much more is behind this so called company and console.

This should be required reading for anyone who still believes that this console will ever be more than a greedy attempt to milk VC's for some quick cash.

This sounds to me like the biggest scam ever!

[PierceLabs (549351)]

First we have a guy running the place who has left a wake of unsuccessful companies - many of which are bankrupt.

Next we have a console that noone has ever seen.

Next we have a sales and distribution model that requires you to pay them before you get product... pay to an address that is a PO box.

Finally you have no developer interest of any kind from major players, let alone publishers. No sign of an office or hosting facility that can handle delivering applications. No sign of infrastructure to manufacture or support the box either. Sketchy always changing specifications and unreachable personnel.

It would not surprise me in the least if these guys take a bunch of orders and then just 'disappear'. I mean there is no sign that there is any plans for a business at this point.

Re:Security features

[adrianbaugh (696007)]

Case intrusion is bullshit; it will pose a minor problem to ordinary geeks (what self-respecting geek doesn't own a hacksaw?) and none at all to organised pirates. Unless they have some kind of casing laced with a network of wires so that it stops working permanently if any of them are cut, it's useless. And I think even the RIAA would struggle to convince people they needed something that draconian - what if you dropped it and a wire snapped by accident?

Re:Tim Roberts' Resume

[toriver (11308)]

regclean, Mcafee Virusscan, Mcafee Regclean,

This man is teh w1zzrd! He has run both Microsoft and McAfee's regclean programs! A man of the wurlde!