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*

Comments

Michael: You're rude & ignorant

[Amsterdam Vallon]

Michael,

We don't need your (what you think are) witty comments making fun of a real business with a real business plan. Hell, nearly any business plan looks good next to the business that you believe in that give away their products for free. It's 2003, and you and your compadres are still trying to figure out how to make money by writing software for free. As a math minor, I must say that you're in a for one hell of a problem.

Maybe this company is spearheaded by someone who has money to blow, and so he or she decided they wanted to give the game console market a try. I don't think you personally are the one who should be judging them or their company on a world stage like Slashdot that receives millions of readers every day.

Sure, it's said that bad press is better than no press at all, but I just wish people like Michael wouldn't make the good-hearted folks like myself here at Slashdot look like bitter old unemployed programmers.

Just my two cents.

A faithful Slashdot contributor,
-- Amsterdam Vallon

awesome

[tps12]

It's always great to see some competition in the stagnant console market. Also, I wonder if they've given any thought to releasing a Linux distro for this sucker. If I read the article correctly, it has support for Ethernet, so this might make a cool little X terminal for mom.

Supporting Linux would be a key advantage over existing console makers, who go out of their way to prevent customers from running a real OS on their devices.

Maybe this time next year I'll be posting this comment from a GNU/Phantom boxin! Here's hoping they see the light.

Some technical notes

[Walter Bell]

I was talking with my Uncle Isaac a few weeks ago about the game industry, and he brought this up. As a Sony employee, he has access to internal releases, and he mentioned that Sony had formed a "strategic parnership" with Infinium so that the Infinium console is backwards-compatible with PS1 and PS2 (and will be compatible with PS3 in the future). (So that is where the "32000 games" are coming from.) Apparently the Infinium console is an extremely ambitious endeavor; they are going around and paying top dollar for licenses for each of the major architectures (Playstation, Xbox, Sega Saturn, etc.) in an attempt to craft an uber-box that plays games on all of the supported platforms. Word around Sony is that they are trying to use a Transmeta chip, so that the CPU's instruction set can be "field-programmed" to match the platform the CD/DVD was originally intended for. The upside for Sony and Microsoft is that Infinium is going to be paying them to produce each unit (instead of the converse which they often see with their own products). The downside is that the general consensus in the video game industry is that such a box is not feasible with today's technology - at least not without massive amounts of duplication of effort (which would drive the console's price toward the $1000 mark).

IMHO this is just another misapplication of venture capital - an impossible product that is doomed to fail in the marketplace. But we will see whether or not they can make a profit on the unit.

~w

Grade: C+

[Amsterdam Vallon]

It's always great to see some competition in the stagnant console market.

Yeah, OK, I'll bite.

Console gaming systems are among the highest selling products of all-time. What's fascinating is that sales figures of console systems like PS2, X-Box, Gamecube, etc. have shown to be recession-proof and nearly always in the black year after year for the past decade or two.

With so many games to choose from, it's no wonder the video game industry is headed for a record-breaking year," said Richard Ow, senior account manager, NPDFunworld. "Annual 2001 was the year of the console, and now with so many households owning one or more of them, the goal of video game publishers is to be 'the game' on everyone's holiday gift list," said Ow.

Year-to-date (January through October) 2002 total console hardware dollar volume increased 29 percent, compared to the same time period last year. Another bright spot for the industry was the category of console accessories, showing an impressive 27 percent increase in dollar volume versus last year. (from this GameWorld story)

So, while yours was an interesting troll attempt, your inclusiong of a blatant and easily-disproved non-fact in the first sentence is what messed you up.

Re-write for a B-.

Re:HOW MANY TIMES DID YOU GET ASS RAPED IN JAIL?/

[Anonymous Coward]

I am not a fish dammit! I'm a man!! puckers lips like a fish Noo!!!

Re:Sweet, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

its been given a release date you fucking idiot. Try not to act too sheltered.