Phantom Game Console Presentation 237
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."
Re:Doesn't sound right (Score:2, Informative)
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 fact, I'd be one to argue that an OS will get in the way of getting down to the bare metal, and would provide worse performance than a "naked" system.
Additionally, game makers are terrified of piracy. Scared shitless. If someone makes a system that is more hack resistant to casual piracy, then they're going to have a pretty attractive carrot to dangle in front of developers.
That's great except for this article... (Score:3, Informative)
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.