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Beta Testers For Phantom Sought
An'Desha Danin writes "According to an article on GameSpot, Infinium Labs is now taking applications for beta testers for its mysterious Phantom console over at the official website. Apparently they're looking for about a hundred gamers with broadband to test the console towards the end of the year. Infinium are still planning to publicly unveil the Phantom at the Ultimate Gamers Expo in LA this August."
Will be very intersting to see what they do to prevent cheating and hacking into it to modify anything. I noticed they said this in their press release:
seamless upgrades and patch management
That is just begging for some kind of exploit. Also what is their subsceptibility to viruses and DDOS attacks.
Courage is fear holding on a minute longer. George Patton
I wonder if the console market is really going to accomodate yet another system at this point. I hate to sound trollish, but I really see this system tanking. It sounds like a cool idea until you really think hard about what makes consoles successful. I wonder whether this system's methodology of acquiring games wouldn't make it a playground for piracy on a level heretofore unseen.
I'm sure somebody will install Linux on it within a day or so of it's release, heh.
But I'll put the question to y'all here on Slashdot. Do you guys think this console really has a chance of success, and, if so, why? I'm rather interested in what the other geeks think of this thing.
Before you bother clicking through (to an application form at an IP address, very bad form) this is a US only beta test. They don't bother to say US Only anywhere, but there is no country field in the application, and only US states are listed in the states field.
Poor attention to detail in a console manufacturer, not a great sign.
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I support spreading santorum
It's essentially a PC (runs PC compatible games - probably runs a version of embedded XP). So the only advantages to owning something like this is the service, and the fact that it is (hopefully) quiet and as easy to use as a console.
The service is what will make or break this unit. Are you ready to pay a monthly fee to play games for your console?
What the console market really really needs is a system that will play the games on all three current consoles. Getting that much computing power cheaply into one box wouldn't be easy, but writing the emulators ought to be straightforward since half the work has already been done in previous emulators.
A high end graphics card coupled with a 2GHz processor ought to do it. And, of course, a special DVD drive that will manage all the tricks (including running backwards) that current consoles have.
Might have to break some encryption, though, which involves DMCA land. But the reality is that the games shouldn't be tied to the console at all. Ubiquitous computing should include the ability to run any program anywhere, and should be covered under fair use.
Ain't gonna happen, but nice to dream about.
-Adam
It must be depressing when you talk about what you do and everyone just thinks you're smoking crack :-)
I doubt this will do better than the jaguar-cd.
./revolution