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?

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

I'm seeing some sh*t!

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

It does not exist!

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?

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

If you believe the phantom...

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."

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."

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

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

Can't beat free publicity.

Not quite...

"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?

Re:Not quite...

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...

Vaporware

ehh...still sounds like pure vaporware to me...They are trying to sucker some investor into putting in and they will never put out.

Doesn't sound right

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 console games that extreme ?

Mandalorian Armor

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

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

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.

i know where to get one

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!

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] and found out they don't have essays at all.

heh

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 :-)

ya know

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.

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 critical questions unanswered. It was information about The Phantom, however, which until now had been almost non-existent.

The speaker for most of the presentation was Robert Shambro, one of two large Italian fellows who looked like they could moonlight as enforcement agents for various underground loan agencies. Rob spoke eagerly and seemed genuinely excited to present the Phantom and it's details to the crowd, but there was definitely a shiny coating of PR and spin covering the words of his oration. The other speaker was a third man, a generally non-descript laid back fellow by the name of Tim Roberts, who is the CEO of Infinium Labs. He answered a few questions but for the most part Rob did all the talking.

Yes, they did bring an actual Phantom "console" to the meeting. It looked exactly like the mock ups on the Infinium Labs website, and was about as big as a standard PC-- just picture your home desktop laying on it's side. Yes, it even had that glowing blue Phantom logo on the front. There were no visible controller ports, however there were some USB ports in the back, along with various outputs for S-Video, Component, A/V, a few USB ports and even a FireWire connection.

The Hardware

One of the first topics in the presentation was the Phantom's hardware. It was markedly different from what is listed on their website and in their promotional video, however Rob stressed that it was a beta box and that it may upgrade before release. They listed a 1.8Ghz Pentium 4 processor, 256mb of RAM (didn't mention what type) which could be upgraded to 512 or a full gig. An 80 gigabyte "storage device"-- no further specs than that were given. Rob also mentioned the system would be using "NVidia's NV36 graphics card." All the controllers and peripherals were made by Logitech, cord connected at first but wireless if you upgrade. He also said that currently the box was running on a standard ATX motherboard, which explained the console's size. Rob said he'd like it to be smaller but that's dependent on pricing issue, of course. He then went on to say that they had but five of these prototypes, which goes in direct contrast with previous statements from Tim Roberts that they "have several hundred prototype models here in the office." Well, perhaps those were earlier (Alpha?) prototypes.

As far as specs go, that's all we got. There are lots of little details missing-- RAM type, bus speeds, etc etc... technical as they are, they really make a difference in a high performance gaming machine. Again, Rob stressed that this was a Beta version of the hardware so things were subject to change.

Basically, the hardware is presented as a fair-to-middling PC. It even runs on a "specialized" Windows XP kernel. Now remember, consoles can get by with slower processor speeds and less RAM because they have very powerful hardware configurations made solely for pushing polygons around on screen. Also, most games run at a low resolution compared to your computer monitor. When questioned, Rob stated that the console is aimed for TV use.

Next topic was protection-- keeping the user out of the Phantom's hardware and software. He very quickly listed off lots of technologies and encryptions, nothing on the software end was out of the ordinary but some of the more interesting hardware ones were "Case Intrusion Detection" and "Epoxy Encapsulation of Critical ROMs." Yes, no going inside your own hardware for you, young gamer.

Games are Not His Focus

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

I can't see their market advantage

The Phantom has no actual input devices for physical media. No CD/DVD drives, no cartridge slots, not even a place for memory cards. All content is delivered online, via the mighty power of it's "always on" broadband connection. Games can be downloaded as trial demos, rented, or outright purchased. In the case of demos or rentals, you are required to be connected to the internet while you play. Rob certainly pitched the upside of this delivery model: no paying for packaging and no paying for shelf space at Wal-Mart or Best Buy. Ok, cool. One attendee asked if these savings would pass down to the consumer-- considering the "3 to 5 dollars" per game packaging costs and the ten to twenty dollars spent paying the store would be saved, games could be offered to a user at a lower price. Well, no, says Rob. He says that they don't want to have games that "cannibalize each other", and there he may have a point.

Then how on earth are they supposed to compete?
They are limiting their own market to those who can get broadband. And for those who don't already have broadband, that's an extra cost, in addition to the regular console game pricing.
Add in the fact that they are competing with Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony, who have exclusive content for their consoles. I really don't see how this can work. Lower price is probably the only way they can compete.

Infineum business plan

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?

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

Security features

I actually read the "article" and the author said that standard Digital Rights features would be included as well as epoxy encapsulation and case intrusion.

Case intrusion can be a useful feature by which you may be able to disable the device if opened (with or with out power).

It is my understanding epoxy encapsulation is when you bond the die directly to the PCB and embed the IC under a bubble of epoxy. This is standard practice.

IMHO this is all fake so I guess it doesn't really matter in the end. ;)

Enron Economics

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

If I remember correctly, April would be in Q2.

Pssh... epoxy THIS.

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

This is Going to Tank

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???

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 can go to an EB games (yea right, EB games isn't dumb enough to sell this pile O poo) hand the cashier $300 and I am lucky to walk out of the store with.... a receipt!

As long as EB games has PS2's, Gcubes and Xboxes in stock, and as long as we can walk out of the store with one, no body is gonna buy one of these things.

It also isn't the kiddies who get excited about every third game that hits the market.
In order to get those kids excited you gotta have some launch titles.
It is ALLLL ABOUT THE LAUNCH TITLES (just ask Nintendo).

So, I ask again, just who the hell is the market for this thing?

Have we...

"Wanged" Penny-Arcade yet?

I know how they are gonna make money on this.

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 years for the company to make some money and then sue them till there balls hit the floor.

This isn't about a console.
It is about future copyright infringment.

I am still reeling...

I am still reeling at the thought that folks actually bought Xboxes. It's inevitable that anything good that appears on the Xbox will eventually be released to the PC side as well. People are a little wary about a box that hooks up to a magical fountain of online games for good reason. Fountains like this can dry out all too easily. With a console, at least you have your CDs and stuff... I doubt we'll see them sell many. Or, maybe the form factor / bios / whatever is conducive to hacking, and they'll die like the iOpener company did.

Smoke, Mirrors, and the Bomb

"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.

None of it matters

All console sales are completely based on marketing, anyway. Sony managed to put Sega out of the console business even thought PS2 isn't really any more powerful than Dreamcast. Hardware is irrelevant, as the makers of Phantom will soon realize.

That's great except for this article...

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.

Bandwidth?

One problem I've never even heard adressed - won't it cost them quite a bit bandwidth-wise? We're talking sending the contents of multiple complete games over an internet connection to each user. With any substantial user base, that's going to require an almost ridiculous amount of bandwidth, barring some sort of file-swarming (which seems unlikely due to their stance on DRM - peer-to-peer and DRM just don't go together). Let's see, assuming:

10000 very hard-core users, at 650MB downloaded per user per day... 10000 * 650 * 30 = 195 terabytes of bandwidth each month!

That's just not feasible, and it's assuming a fairly small user base of ten thousand. Of course, games might be stored on that 80GB "storage device," but what happens when that device is filled? Does the user have to completely get rid of products he/she already payed for to get new material? And none of this even takes into account the amount of time it takes to download material... either this will lead to load times far worse than those of the early PSX games, or each game will be downloaded at once (likely taking an hour or two). I doubt ISPs will like this much, either - they already complain enough about traffic from P2P networks, and this new development would simply end with much slower overall speeds for all of an ISP's broadband users.

Pricing structure

Let me get this straight... They are releasing inferior hardware because they "don't want to take a loss" on each piece sold. They are also gluing it shut, so you can't make any modifications on the hardware they aren't losing money selling to you.

Distribution of games is apparently going at 60% of sale price. Unlike a real publisher, that 60% doesn't buy you any advertising, hype, or free press copies. At the end of this, the Developer and original Publisher split $20, and Indrema walks away with $30. By comparison, Nintendo's cut is estimated at between 3 and 5 dollars on games on their system. Of course, if you want a front page listing that will cost you as well.

Now, the consumer purchases a $300 PC for... $300. This gives the consumer the ability to purchase full PC games at full PC game prices, without added PC hassles such as word processing or Adobe Photoshop. On top of this, the consumer must pay $10 every month just for the priveledge of using this thing that they bought, or else it goes limp and worthless. Anyone think Divx [penny-arcade.com] is getting a soulmate?

So this company gets $3 per sale to advertise a game, $30 per sale in commission, at 6 per year they make $20 per sale in connectivity. They make $53 for every $50 game sold... Minus connectivity charges of course. In exchange for this, the publisher accepts a smaller cut but doesn't have to print manuals. The player gets games nearly on demand, but pays on average $70 per game, pays for duplicate ho-hum hardware that isn't theirs, and doesn't get hard copies of anything.

Why will we buy it? Obviously because us suckers will buy anything.

I've said it before and I'll say it again... Online distribution of games is the wave of the future. Sadly, all waves of the future will be crassly exploited by snake oil salesmen. I see no reason to believe differently here.

I'd like to believe that they are really gamers and they really want to break into the highly competitive console market. I'd also like to believe that they are intelligently positioning themselves to be a niche player, and that their costs will scale perfectly with their userbase. Sadly, neither of these seems likely. Perhaps they should just find a way to hook up the N-Gage up to a TV screen and sell that. I hear they are going cheap these days.

Fuck them

Fuck the Phantom console. Those fuckers have spammed me too many times.

Waste of VC money

Its cons like this that make it more and more difficult for legit companies to get the extremely hard to get investor money these days.

Come April 2004 there will be a new press conference showing exactly the same thing and indicating a release in 6 months from then until some sucker of a company buys these guys out and nothing becomes of it because they realize what BS the whole thing is.

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

This statement says to me: "you people are suckers and SOMEONE out there will give us money for this snake-oil"

"The presentation was quality, but it was lean on specs and details, and there was never a moment when anyone in the crowd was blown away. Rob dodged a lot of questions, and the group left without a demonstration of the technology."

And this surprised them? I can type up a spec sheet that looks really impressive and clue a box shut with a blue led on the front of it and make a logo too.

look at Apple, people

If the Phantom version of Crusher XTreme sells for 30 bucks, and the PS2/GCN/XBOX versions all sell for 50, why not go with the Phantom one?

For the same reason people sometimes pay $15-$20 for a physical CD instead of paying $9.99 to download it at the iTunes Music Store: sometimes you'd rather own the thing permanently with no restrictions on how or where you use it.

They should look at it another way: if I can pay $50 for a game that I own, unrestricted, can play on my friends' consoles, can resell at half price, and can play at any time, why should I pay the same price for a downloadable version of the same game and a $10/month subscription on top of that?

Raped.

The 'Phantom' console is like taking your fingers, and gluing them together, and going "YAY I CAN PLAY PING PONG NOW!"

By the way, you're on fire while you play ping pong and you're also being raped by a goose at the same time.

(Oh I almost forgot, the goose itself is being raped by a chainsaw, so feathers and blood are flying everywhere.)

Hmmmm

A few questions about this topic came up also. People enquired about a quality control system for these games, to ensure that not any ol' hack could just upload their half baked junk on the Infinium servers. The details for that were sketchy, and Rob said the framework wasn't really in place. He did say that he had "thousands" of interested parties contacting him weekly with games and ideas. One other attendee asked how his game would be noticed among these "thousands", especially if he was a small indie developer. Rob dodged this question quite a few times, but eventually he bit the bullet and admitted that developers who wanted front page recognition would have to pay a higher "slotting fee" to receive it. This caused audible consternation in the room. It seems that there's no escaping paying money for shelf space, be it on an end cap at CompuGiant or in the virtual halls of Infinium's shopping sites.

It seems to me that some sort of user rating system could be put in place, and also users could make lists of their favorite games (or games of a certain genre etc.) that everyone could see. Much like Amazon.com does. If you're an indie game developer and you have a great game, the ratings will show users the way to your game.

Potential Partnership

Should this thing ever truly see the light of day (and I hope it does: Infinium deserves to go belly-up in a big way), they really should consider teaming up with Nokia. They could get some Phantom/nGage connectivity action going on. Why? Because "you [us] people" will buy anything.

Actually, the comment of "Well then you aren't really part of the Phantom's core user base," is what really chokes me up: The implication is that the Phantom's core user base is that group of people who already want a Phantom.

Saves a fortune in advertising. So logically, they should be planning an initial run of, what, 12 units worldwide?

I could go on and on, but really, they've given us so much rich material for mockery that it's difficult to concieve of anyone taking them seriously, which takes some of the fun out of ridiculing their inane babblings.

Phantom can go FUCK themselves for spamming

they harvested my spamtrap addy i use here on slashdot and started spamming it. Immiedate larts were sent to their hosting service) and spamcop. After a couple of bitches sent to the hoster, they terminated phantom.

Proof of phantom's spamming at http://groups.google.com/groups?q=phantom.net++gro up:news.admin.net-abuse.sightings+group:news.admin .net-abuse.sightings+group:news.admin.net-abuse.si ghtings+group:news.admin.net-abuse.sightings&hl=en &lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&group=news.admin.net-abuse. sightings&scoring=d&selm=636e0509.0310090928.34017 a74%40posting.google.com&rnum=1

And Proof of the kill is at
http://mail.btfh.net/dead-spammer.txt

Mixed Messages

All right, so I'm going to chime in on this simply because I can.

So we have this company, they have this slogan of being "by gamers, for gamers". Then we have this press conference where Captain PR Guy says that gamers aren't the target consumer for this product.

Now, I'm just a simple caveman and your world frightens and confuses me, but isn't that just a little confused on their part. I have said a few times that this is just a fancified computer.

My problem is that these people seem schizophrenic, as if they're trying to court the gaming community but at the same time they're denying that they have anything to do with it. If we listen to what they say at one point they want everyone who's L337 Ha>
I stated this when there was the bit on Newsforge, that they're running an ineffective model. They won't attract the hardcore gamers because first the price drop isn't that great, and second it hooks them onto hardware that they could have assembled for themselves with the capability to upgrade. They're not really catering to teh norms because one, it's really big, two what does it have for them, most people like games you can just sit down and play for a couple of minutes, like snood. It doens't mean anything for the casual player to have the latest and greatest availible for download if all they want is some bust-a-move shareware to click away a few hours.

My proposition is much simpler, you go for easy, you get one of those little mini computers that everyone is so in love with these days, you stuff a couple of cheap chips in there, make it look sleek, make it match the TV, make it go great with the rest of the room, you know, make it fit well on an Entertainment Center shelf, sort of unobtrusive. You hook it up, and you forget about it till you want to play it. You give them a couple of simple and fun games for free, just like it was that stupid atari ten in one thing, make it the easy freeware stuff, stuff that you can play for hours on end and all the time, like Tetris. For your subscription fee you go with higher end family friendly games, and party games and that sort of stuff. At least that's the way I see, you keep teh idea of the broadband kind of thing, but make it wiht your refular connecting, god, getting a seperate line, maybe if it could run things along the bottom of the TV like you could check stocks, e-mail and all of that fun stuff while just lounging about during a commerical, then there might be something in a dedicated connection for the masses, but not much.

buy it?

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

Well Rob, rest assured, if that's the only selling point you have....I WON'T be buying your console.

God....marketing 101 is PRODUCT PLACEMENT! And you have not done a damned thing to place your product. It has NOTHING that separates it from anything else. You offer us nothing new. Those other consoles that we all bought? Guess what? They all offered something new. Nintendo had its awesome lineup of games, the PS2 had a cdrom drive, the Xbox had impressive specs....but you add nothing new to the party. Sorry.

Tim Roberts' Resume

Tim Roberts (Inifinium Chairman/CEO) Resume, Archived version: http://web.archive.org/web/20020525154216/www.timr .tv/

(Under Applications Experience) ...Microsoft Frontpage 2000, Adobe Golive Cyberstudio,

WINZIP, Oracle Accounting; Asset Management; Sales and Marketing, regclean, Mcafee Virusscan, Mcafee Regclean, Dodge Plans, Windows Media Player, Retrospect, Liveperson, Real Player, CUSEEME Client and server, Norton utilities, Adobe Acrobat, Webtrends, Roxio Easy CD Creator...

Is being able to click a "play" icon really resume-worthy?

Hmm...

1.8 ghz processors, 80 gig hard drives, 256 megs of ram for less than 300 bucks. Not really a better deal than some emachines POS I could buy, and yet I can't help but think: "Man I'd like to get one of those and run linux on it."

I guess I just like to stick it to the man. . .

heh.

from this http://www.ferrago.co.uk/story/1984
I spoke to Tim Roberts when the story first broke, and showed him the sceptical feedback we were getting on the news. He told me about his previous experience in setting up Savvis Communications Inc. and several other internet based companies. He also reassured me with the credentials of the company's "Advisory Board".

that shows how credible he is, most internet companies are dead now, and didnt really do much of anything, most pump and dumped stock, or did some pointless thing online..
could this by what he's trying to aciever here? create a vaporware system, then get investors, and pump and dump stock until he's flat out rich off an idea that isnt copyrighted or anything? or is he just an over-enthusiastic geek that has been to mini-itx.com and zophar.net one too many times?
who knows? this system doesnt look all that great any ways if it's (doubtedly) real.
Besides, there would be commercials for it by now.. with no real advertisement (eg, tv commercials, ads in magazines, etc, not going by word of mouth or news stories) no real franchise deals, or any concrete proof and someone answering the phone screaming "WHO THE FUCK IS THIS!?!?! I'LL SUE YOU" Isnt a convincing campaign whatsoever.
In the end, we'll sit back and laugh at the morons who actually bought into the hype and it will prove that people, no matter how many times it's been shown before, will buy into hype no matter what. This is the drive that fuels companies like microsoft, people dont learn that well from past mistakes, they have to come up behind the horse and get the shit kicked outta them 3 or 4 times before they learn "OOOOH, so I dont go behind the horse and try to push him to make him go!"

This sounds to me like the biggest scam ever!

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.

Real prototype pictures?

I dunno, but here's the URL:

Front [angelfire.com]
Rear [angelfire.com]
Quake III [angelfire.com]

I wanna build my own console.

That product has got to be a joke. I'm dead serious (and I mean this, I'm sure most of you are on the same page as me). It's not too hard to design a product like this your self. I feel really bad for the poor suckers(Investors) who shelled out money for this. With about two software developers you could probably put together there entire backend and create a system. It sounds to me like every aspect of this entire architecture is comprised of third party components. Even the OS is a joke. Just buy yourself a copy of XP embedded and you can compile your custom OS in a couple of hours. Seriously no one would even know it's XP. You can completely configure every aspect of the entire OS. (You can create a 32 meg install of Windows XP) Even secure content delivery can be accomplished with MS products. Seriously this has to be a joke.

Re:Bad name for a console

They cant use the term "The Phantom" Its already copywrited and tradmakes up the wazu! Its the title of a charactor that... now get this... hated Pirates!

This is more smoke and mirrors than VisOn Windows!