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Phantom Game Console
jasoncart writes "In a bold move newly formed US technology company Infinium Labs Corporation have announced the release of a new gaming console. They promise that it will be faster than any other console on the market, and have a huge games catalog (32k+ games apparently) available over broadband. Can they take on the big boys? Is broadband pentration high enough? Only time will tell - prototypes are promised in March." There's also an interview with their PR spokesdrone. *cough*Indrema.*cough*
more than just 32k games and a great console. They need the mindshare and advertising power that Sony and Microsoft have, and to a lesser extent, Nintendo.
Even then, I think consumers already have enough with the PS2, XBox, and GameCube. Will they pick up a fourth?
The idea of playing games over broadband is interesting, but that's already a common use for computers (where you would have the broadband!).
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Free your mind.
A small goup here in the U.K. think we might have a solution to entry into this sort of market: possibly utilising open-source software & tech. (But ultimately in a no idealistic way).
;)
Don't worry we're not thinking of releasing a console (ala Indrema). And hopefully we wont be needing huge ammounts of start capital. Aside from that we're in early stages so I'm keeping quiet for now.
Well, anyway, good luck to these guys; they'll need it. Even if they don't make it, we may have a pleasant suprise for you in Winter 2003/04
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
I grew up with the rise of consoles - from the early ones like the atari and pong - through NES and its siblings to now, the ps2 xbox etc, just as many of us have. But I still do not own one.
I had a sega, I had NES and super NES and dreamcast. But I choose not to buy any new ones now.
I have played computer games religously ever since I was in 3rd grade. I play games on my PC and thats how I like it.
I have a big comfy chair - a huge monitor and a very fast machine - in a room dedicated to computer gaming. I prefer this setup greatly over sitting on the floor in front of my TV. I prefer the level of interaction that a PC can provide.
I dont have any desire for an xbox, ps2 gamecube or other... my PC is just fine. and it serves a hell of a lot more functions than a console system.
The current prices of hardware is incredible. I just built another great system for $400. at just twice the price of an xbox/ps2 I get 1000 times the functionality.
Unless the system they are offering is $25.00 and I dont have to pay any sort of monthly access (like if it were to utilize my *exisiting* lan and broadband connection - without a large price for a lan adapter - i will continue to have no interest in console systems.
What they should do is focus on making a PCI card that you can insert into your PC and utilize its hardware to make it a "console" system in that it can hold the controllers and play all the games - for a minimal cost.
then make all the money off the price of the games (which are already overpriced at $50.)
"Anyone else remember typing in games from magazines?"
Yup. In basic AND machine language. You had to pay extra to get the games on a floppy disk. Ah, memories.
Conglom-O: We Own You (TM).
"This is doomed to failure. Without any of the big name gaming companies to back them up, noone will buy the console.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the next 3do"
Whoah, easy on the 3DO there. It did pretty damn well for a no-name company that sold a $700 machine. You shoulda said Jaguar!
In any event, everybody and their mother thinks they know how to make a good game console, but until they get big name developers on board they can forget it. Remember when nirvana was getting a game console that could do what an arcade unit does? People want the premium gaming experience, not hacked together games that barely convey the ideas they're after.
This system ain't going to do well as long as Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony are getting the 'wow' games.
On the one hand, they appear to be charging for downloads of traditional PC games, so it appears that they have finally found another way to take commodity hardware and make money licensing game sales (the other, XBox).
Outperforming a generation of consoles that was released over two years ago isn't particularly difficult... The Dreamcast did it quite well, but failed miserably in the market. The key is not to be better than everyone else, (the PS2 is currently the slowest console available), but to be so much better that all of the developers flock to your system and produce must-have games. With a system of renting otherwise available PC games, I don't see how they will have any of the exclusives they need to thrive, unless they develop them themselves.
Limiting themselves to broadband-only customers and broadband-only distribution is an interesting choice. Traditionally, if you wanted to sell a console you had to convince hundreds of thousands of stores across the world to devote 5 - 20 feet of shelf space to your product... a difficult task to say the least. However, by going with broadband, they have cut out that huge fixed cost. If they didn't go overboard with their DRM and can find a somewhat linearly scaling manufacturing facility (difficult, I admit), they *could* survive on a very small installed userbase. They will have to work with the Nintendo model (all partners absorb fixed cost risks in exchange for a cut of razor blade sales), but I could really see them living comfortably on a base of 1 to 2 million people or less.
On the other hand, by going with broadband, they have limited themselves to selling a crippled, specialized PC to people who are guaranteed to already have a full-fledged PC. Microsoft tried it with the XBox, and while sales aren't horrible, they are still losing the race with a lunchbox. Infinium will have to develop / buy exclusives, and it doesn't seem like they have the funding to do that.
Furthermore, DRM and temporary rentals are *designed* to frustrate consumers, and the home entertainment device crowd is notoriously unforgiving when they feel they have been wronged. They will have to dance a fine line between demos / rentals / subscriptions / and sales. Just reading their mission statement makes me wonder if they will have anytime, night-and-weekend, and overtime minutes. Can I get extra minutes if I sign to a one-year contract? What do you mean I owe $170 dollars for going over? But it was Final Fantasy, what do you expect me to do?
I'd like to say I have high-hopes in this situation, but high hopes in this situation would be survival.
-c
This Sig is a mnemonic device designed to allow you to recognize this author in the future.
The answer to the 32k games statement seems pretty obvious to me. I think that in addition to having a small set of games written for and optimized for their supposedly powerful platform, they will put emulators in the box by default. Boot code will detect a disc/cartridge of Type X and load the appropriate emulator from rom. They could easily emulate NES, SNES, N64, PS1, Sega up through Dreamcast, and maybe PS2 althought I'm not entirely sure on that. The 32k games will be other consoles' games that you can replay on this one. It's the only way that number can make sense.
11*43+456^2
That's cool. What I want to know is, how do you find maintaining this bleeding-edge level of gamer gear?
I ask because, honestly, the PC gaming rig puzzles me. Even with the basement-level prices you speak of ($400/box), it still strikes me as prohibitively expensive. I suppose it depends on your dedication ot the hobby.
Let me illustrate - I do most of my gaming on a PS2. My personal computer is a Mac, which isn't good for anything but the biggest mainstrain PC games (ala WarCraft).
PS2 = $US 200 (new when it came out)
PS2 game = $US 50
Now, this thing, if its anything like my PS1, will last me for about 3-4 years. I get to sit on a comfy couch, with friends who can also see clearly my large television, with my surround-sound stereo (that I already forked out for), and play 1st-rate video games. It boots very quickly, the graphics are great, most importantly the games are great. The controller is custom-designed just for gaming. It never crashes. I don't apply patches or download things, 99% of the unit's uptime is actively gaming.
Now, before you go off and shut me down, tell me.. you've got:
Gaming PC = $US 400
PC Game = $US 50
now add to that PC Game Controller = $US 35
Large Gaming PC monitor = $250
Good PC Speakers = $100 Windows license to run said Games = $50
How is that better? You're paying a premium for graphics and sound that are only ever going to be marginally better.
I know its not all about economics, but the games, man! You must have as much money as possible to buy games. That is the whole point.
How often do you update your rig? If it's 'fast', as in fast enough to run a cutting-edge PC game all the time, the turnover must be at least one a year, no? (Of course, the PC is more functional than a PS2, but we are talking about games, no?)
I wish you luck, PC Gamer, but I fear your days are numbered. The consoles are custom-designed to eat your lunch.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
Are you sure that putting (copyrighted) video games in public places constitutes public performance of a copyrighted work? For instance, I've never heard anyone suggest that cybercafes need a public performance license for Quake, or that using Matlab in an interactive demo during public talk (e.g. at a conference) needs a special Matlab license.
I'm guessing that using software does not constitute performance, public or otherwise.
-Paul Komarek
The only way I can think that this thing will have so many games that people might actually want to play is if the machine is simply a repackaged PC, similar to an Xbox, only they have some sort of zany online PC game distribution service that downloads PC games directly to the device.
They may be able to offer slightly lower prices than boxed PC games due to volume and lack of packaging. This would also be a bandwidth nightmare. Maybe you'd order a few games and it would download them automagically over the course of a month.
What a stupid idea. Of course, I could be wrong.
Dewey, you fool! Your decimal system has played right into my hands!
On their "events" page, they list E3 and the Game Developer's Conference... yet they are not registered for either
I'm a bit stumped as to how they can claim that they make a 'fast' console. Quite frankly, I've never used a 'slow' console.
NTSC TVs have a maximum frame rate of 30 FPS (29.7 if you want to get technical). I don't find load times particularly offensive for most consoles now ( the N64 could load anything instantly). Almost every game I've ever played on a console could be played that 30FPS rate ALL THE TIME.
Do they want to turn up the quality of the graphics? It won't be FASTER, but it'll look nicer (although there's only so much you can do at 640x480 interlaced). Sure, you can play pong at 8,000 FPS (even though your TV can only display 30), but do you really WANT to?
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
This platform *MUST* act as an emulator, thus the *need* for it to have the most power of any console on the market.
Why do I say "must"?
32k games equals, roughly, the number of games ever created for all major consoles (and that includes both regional variants, and what MAME calls "clones", which usually make up half to two thirds of the known games for a given platform). Without including such almost-identical versions of the same game, 32k very well might equal the number of games written *ever*, for *any* platform.
No, I did not just pull this number out of the air. As of December 30th, the Cowering ROM ID tools included 33,586 games for "major" console systems (Atari, Nintendo, Sega, Intellivision, Coleco, TG16, NeoGeo). That does not include the Playstation or Xbox line, of course, as the games take up too much room on current hardware, even if a decent emulator existed. But I figure that would add another two to three thousand.
For comparison, the C64/Amiga line, arguably the longest running, most popular gaming platform of all time (though not really a console) only had 26k games. But this never-before-heard-of company has already beat that for their initial launch? Not very likely.
So, as my guess, they plan to push this on the retrogaming community, and possibly open it to "modern" ports (though I don't think they'll focus on that area, at least not unless/until they get a good market share). They can claim such a high number of games without already having licensed them for the same reason Nintendo now carries games written by Sega: They don't need to "steal" the original works, or make obscenely complicated licensing deals (as many people have suggested would hold true of and retrogaming platform). They'll just let the authors republish their original games (without even needing a rewrite, since very likely most of the source code for older consoles no longer exists), for a cut of the action.
On the bright side, I could see this as actually succeeding. Personally, I enjoy retrogaming, and would gladly pay a few bucks (perhaps even the price of a single "modern" game) for a *legal* CD with 50-100 classic games on it ($0.25 per game, with at least a quarter of them "good" games, sounds quite reasonable). I suppose this would have the number of people into classic video games as the biggest limiting factor, though.
They claim:
I'll buy that that's the total number of games ever released for the PC, plus the number of games emulatable on the PC (MAME etc). Looks like a duck, quacks like a duck.
I'm serious - why is the be all and all of what a console can do always measured by speed?
And anyway what speed?
In a modern machine be it PS2/XBox/PC the graphics CPU is as important as the main CPU.
So do we measure in clock speed - polygons per second - frame rate - operations per second - memory bandwidth....
At the end of the day the big secret is IT DOESNT MATTER
What MATTERS
a) Do the games play fast enough to be responsive?
b) Are the graphics convincing enough without being obviously limited
All of these are down to how well the game is programmed - who cares how cool the graphics are if it runs at 10 frames per second and takes half a second to respond to a button press - who cares if the graphics don't have quite the same number of polygons in if the game is moving so fast you don't notice.
Before I get flamed by the console-kin I am aware this only holds within certain bounds - if the hardware is lacking badly then even good code-craft will not help - but the PS2/XBox/Dreamcast/PC game experience can all be equally as good with a good game, and equally bad with a sucky game.
What matters more to me would be the range of games - the XBox is great when you play Halo, but what then? - and the convenience of the hardware - PS2s don't have hard drives so are suprisingly shock resistant, PC controllers always feel clumsy when compared to console ones but boy can you get a range (the problem here of course is its easy for a PS2 developer to figure out a really good button arrangement because all the controllers are roughly the same - god help PC developers who generally resort to letting the user map the keyboard)
The 'best' console is relatively easy to spot - its the one doing well in the market - the problem is PC 'consoles' don't show up because they are so flexible. At the end of the day the 'best' console is like a car - whatever is the best package for the person that buys it - otherwise we'd all be driving Ferrais (and I am not having a flame war on cars BTW)
For the record my choice would still be the PS2, its got great games, is well engineered and is just a good package.
As it happens I don't own any consoles, nor a bleeding edge PC (well it is, but for DV editing not polygon count) because most of the time I'm watching DVDs....
As a (soon to be) CS grad, after reading through all of the promotional material for the "Phantom" I was amazed to find not one scrap of real technical information.
I'm not even sure that the PR guy they interviewed is even human. I don't think he'd pass a Turing test.
No kinds of hints as to what the underlying architecture might be. Nothing about the graphics / sound hardware. Nothing about the media format. I mean, these are the kinds of things that the hard-core really go for, and all they can say is that "it will please hard-core games." How?
Sorry to say, but my shifty cousin is one of these "entreprenuer" types. "Entrepreneur" usually means "scam artist" in my experience.
A bunch of veteran "entreprenuers" from Florida (that technological mecca)? This whole thing is obviously a scam for VC...
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I kind of miss that amount of customability in games today. They increase the play value. Today, even though the games are much more complex, you can only play it one way, and when you win, there is no point in playing any more.
I don't know. If you are talking success the 2600, NES, SNES, GameBoy, PS1, and PS2 are the most successful systems of all time, and most of them are really, really ugly. The 3DO, TG-16, and Sega CD (1st edition) were all very, very pretty, and failed miserably in the market. The PS2 looks like an average a VCR, the financially successful N64 looked like someone threw a cartridge into a blob of clay, and the GameBoy looked like a boring beige box with a green screen when it first came out, especially compared to the vastly cooler Turbo Express, Lynx, Game Gear, and eventually Nomad and Neo Geo Express.
The SNES? Lavender and Beige? I mean, Lavender and Beige? How did this get past test marketing?
For that matter, no system in history has looked as cool relitive to their companions as the Neo Geo did back in the 16 bit era. That company no longer exists, of course.
I'm starting to wonder if very, very ugly systems stick out in consumers minds, thereby increasing sales. It couldn't be just that the name eminates the coolness factor: who didn't laugh the first time they heard the word "Playstation," "Dreamcast," "Ultra 64," "SuperNES," etc.
Perhaps those industry critics are right when they say that people decide on games to buy, then get the console to support them, rather than buying cool consoles to facilitate gaming. In that situation, the "WOW" factor is firmly where it belongs: with the developers. In the mean time, big players will probably continue to hire design professionals who have never touched a console in their lives. Look at the Playstation. Look at the Vaio line of computers. Which looks very, very cool, and which pads Sony's bottom line to the tune of several hundred million dollars per year?
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