More Info on Phantom Game Console

MImeKillEr writes "Newsforge is reporting that the Phantom Game Console discussed on Slashdot is really a DRM-protected PC, sans floppy or CD running Windows XP. It uses a proprietary encryption method to protect the data on its harddrive, and the only thing that differentiates this 'game console' from a standard, Windows-running PC is that it has no way to get data on or off of it except through a dedicated connection to Infinium Labs' own servers." Newsforge and Slashdot are both part of OSDN.

Comments

Fair use?

[inertia187]

When you pick up a pen in your own home, does the pen have a chain on it to remind you not to walk away with it? Maybe the refrigerator pen would, but a vast majority of pens in your home will not come with a chain because you don't want them.

That's what these DRMs remind me of. They're *supposed* to be a gentle reminder for you to not break the law yet allow fair use. The idea that you can circumvent a DRM and get in trouble is ludicrous, to me.

It's like my pen analogy. If you went to the store to buy a pen and *all* of the pens had chains on them, you'd have to buy a pen with a chain on it. Would you have to use the chain? Could you remove the chain? You certainly could remove the chain from your own pen.

I don't understand how fair use got so screwed up like this. Hey, shouldn't this article be on yro.slashdot.org?

Re:Fair use?

[Aadain2001]

This is a gaming consol, and as such you are not required to buy it. If they do almost no business, and the number 1 reason the marketing department sights is the nasty DRM employeed in the device, both they and another companies thinking of doing something similar will sit up and take notice. Vote with your wallet. It's the quickest way to get a company's attention.

Re:Fair use?

[Planesdragon]

That's what these DRMs remind me of. They're *supposed* to be a gentle reminder for you to not break the law yet allow fair use. The idea that you can circumvent a DRM and get in trouble is ludicrous, to me.

"Fair Use", as taught in law classes, doesn't require an exact copy. Fair Use is quoting from a book, reading a book--maybe even writing a parody of said book. It's not, necessarily, copying the book onto your PDA so you can read it wherever you want to.

DRM systems aren't supposed to be a gentle reminder--part of the education of someone using a PC is to ignore most gentle reminders. DRM is supposed to let the copyright holder trust that the song/book/movie they sell you isn't going to be copied to the computers of all of your friends and their friends, and their friends...

Should DRM be given extra-special protection, beyond a lock and key or copyright law? Maybe, maybe no. Should DRM/DMCA be stretched to cover commercial uses that have nothing to do with copyright? (Think: ink tanks.) Heck no.

I don't understand how fair use got so screwed up like this. Hey, shouldn't this article be on yro.slashdot.org?

Napster and KaZaa. Given the chance to make free perfect copies, the public makes the free perfect copies.

While it's possible that a post-DRM infrastructure that included a working compensation mechanism could arrive, it's not going to show up without capital--and no investor or "artist" is going to trust a system that doesn't even allow them to enforce their federal rights.

Hmm... a nice alternative to DRM would be direct licensing and tracking. Generate unique IDs for all electronic IP sales, and direct-bill the original purcheser for copies that show up on P2P systems...

Re:Fair use?

[grimani]

Doesn't this argument apply to PCs as well?

You're not required to buy a PC. There's a whole world of tae-bo and yoga and other types of entertainment out there!

Re:Fair use?

[paranoic]

If pens where made by software companies

1. There would be no guarantee that they would work or do anything useful at all.
   
2. You may not reverse engineer them.
   
3. You may not use them to write disparaging remarks about the company.
   
4. Amazon.com would own the patent to writing with them.
   
5. The ink would run out at predetermined time and only refills made by the company would work.
   
6. Only the purchaser may use the pen.
   

Of course, the new economic model would require a fee for every letter written by the pen.

Re:Fair use?

[JasonUCF]

It's a product with a specific end-use, dude. They're not selling you a wrench (or a pen) and telling you not to use it. They're selling you their product, a game system. They're not selling you a computer for you to use at your discretion -- even though that's what it's made of.

They're not saying "Here! Compute all you want! Oops, hah hah, not unless we say so!" They're saying "Here, use our product." Doesn't matter if the game's made of old Atari 2600 cartridges or a G5 -- they're not selling you the hardware to use as you'd like, they are selling you what they have done with the hardware.

'Fair Use' is a policy regarding quoting printed word in another printed word application. There is no such thing as fair use doctrine regarding how a private business -- a product seller -- has to sell their product.

Re:Fair use?

[mumblestheclown]

Please sing this song to the tune of "camptown races" Intellectual Property Is-not, is-not Physical Property So analogies suck (chorus) Mod parent down.. Mod parent down! That kind of crap isn't "insightful" Mod Parent down. (i didnt say it would be a _good_ song). for thos attempting to be "funny" after this comment: "camptown races" is in the public domain

Re:Fair use?

[TrekkieGod]

*I'll* definitely vote with my wallet. How do you propose to convince the millions of people who have no idea what DRM is to do the same?

Only problem with any type of voting...you're in the minority, you lose, whether you're right or not. And the whole "DRM prevents pirates, pirates are terrorists" campaigns make sure that we're in the minority. The user who doesn't want to use his own hardware any differently, ie the parents of the small children this is aimed at, sees no difference between a DRM enabled and a DRM disabled console, and hears the big companies saying that DRM is good.

Re:Fair use?

[Xentax]

It's not, necessarily, copying the book onto your PDA so you can read it wherever you want to.

I agree with most of what you said, but this statement is erroneous.

The right to format-shift (e.g. making a CD copy of an audio cassette you've legally bought) and the right to make "collections" (e.g. making a "Bob's favorites" CD with selected tracks from several CD's he legally owns) are both protected by the Fair Use Doctrine. The latter doesn't readily apply to books, but the former is a fairly direct application.

So, yes, you CAN create an eBook from a Book you've bought (assuming you had some means of practically doing so), for your personal and noncommercial use. Obviously, distributing the eBook file(s) of that book to any and everyone is a different story, since doing so is copying, or allowing others to copy, a version of the entire book.

Xentax

Re:Fair use?

[phil reed]

There's a whole world of tae-bo and yoga and other types of entertainment out there!

And increasingly, they are on copy-protected or DRM-ed media.

Re:Fair use?

[CaptainSuperBoy]

Feel free to not buy the damn thing. Or would you prefer to make it illegal for companies to produce devices that inconvenience your copying?

Re:Fair use?

[Anonymous Coward]

camptown races" Intellectual Property Is-not, is-not Physical Property So analogies suck (chorus) Mod parent down.. Mod parent down! That kind of crap isn't "insightful" Mod Parent down.

I am now distributing your copyrighted derivitive work on Kazaa.

Re:Fair use?

[(54)T-Dub]

For that matter you are not required to buy a pen either. It's taxed so it is therefore it must not be a necessity.

Re:Fair use?

[kevlar]

Bogus. In your case, the chain would need to prevent the purchaser from created 700 identical pens by running a script, not from removing it.

Re:Fair use?

[Mysticalfruit]

Fun you should say that...

My wife went out and bought a yoda cd and it wouldn't play in her circa 1992 sony cd player. Ironically, I was able to make a copy of the CD with my phillips burner that then played fine on her stereo.

Moral of the story: copy protected CD's hurt consumers.

Re:Fair use?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are no "Fair Use Rights". There are only Fair Use exceptions to Title 17. If you are able to format shift your media, great. If there are technicle measures in place to prevent you from doing this, tough luck.

Re:Fair use?

[gantrep]

Huh?

Re:Fair use?

[ADOT Troll]

So... let me get this straight.

If I buy this console, and a friend buys it too, we can't trade games?

Do I even "own" the games I pay for?

What happens when the console breaks down and I want to replace it? Did all my games vanish with it? Phantom, indeed!

Considering the amount of games available for my non-phantom computers, why would I ever want to bother with it? I wanted to be able to root for the underdog here, but there's just no way.

Re:Fair use?

[captain_craptacular]

Amen,

I'm sure if you really wanted to you could tear this thing apart and make it work for what you want. Kind of like when you buy a pen you could glue feathers to it and use it as a dart, even though thats not at all what bic had in mind.

I fail to see why the company is doing something bad by attempting to make you use the product for its intended purpose.

Re:Fair use?

[AdEbh]

I fully agree with you that the demise of "fair use" is bad. However I fail to see how fair use is being stopped here, either in the case of the Phantom or your pen.

Fair use is the protection given when you incorporate a piece of another's work into your own under certain circumstances. Such as you quoting a paragraph out of a book in a Uni. assignment. You can't just quote the whole book, 10% is the limit established by the courts.

What the hell are you going to do with 10% of an executable that you don't have the source to?

- Alex

Re:Fair use?

[Scaba]

My wife went out and bought a yoda cd...

Was that Yoda CD anything like this?

Re:Fair use?

[Surak]

Don't forget that clicking the button on the end of the pen indicates your acceptance of these terms of use.

And your pen would surrepititously write information about what you wrote and send it to the manufacturer whenever you 'upgraded' the ink cartridge.

And you could only use paper compatible with your pen, of course. And the company would make sure that only *its* paper would work with its pen.

And some people would independently develop their own "open" pen and paper systems, where pens and papers would work interchangeably, only to be sued by SCO for violating the copyright on their pen design.

Re:Fair use?

[EinarH]

Voting with the wallet is a good thing, but I prefer to vote with my brain. If they are going to sell this below production cost*(like XBox) at a price I find reasonable, I'll but it.
It these people really are so stupid that they tink that the current way of selling consoles is a good business model, well, good luck..

If somene breaks the crypto and DRM in a way that makes it possible to run Linux, well guess what; I'll say fuck their crypto and DRM scheme:
I'm running Linux on *my* box.

*Maybe not, sice they are a uppstart company with less cash to burn off.

Re:Fair use?

[Trolling4Dollars]

Vote with your wallet. It's the quickest way to get a company's attention.

Voting with your wallet almost never works for me because my tastes and ideals differ so greatly from most Americans. You can't say that "voting with your wallet" is really a useful approach for everyone. I think the best approach is to try and educate others why it is that I choose to do things the way I do. If enough people are persuaded to see things the way I see them, then it all works out for the best. (Assuming that they want to do things the way I do them)

The only problem with my approach is that it puts me in the position of being the promoter. I hate being a promoter. But if I want the world to become a slightly better place, the only way to do it is to promote fair views. Kind of sucks in a way.

Re:Fair use?

[Setti]

You know, I don't see anyone complaining when it came down to the PS1, PS2, SegaCD, Dreamcast, Gamecube and all those others that try to use their own form of protection. If they want to build their system in a foolish way, just do so by not buying it and asking your friends to boycott it or through other normal means. However, if you plan on buying it, then I'd suggest to make sure you know what you are buying before you do so, otherwise you may end up upset if you find out about features you did not want it to have.

Re:Fair use?

[Acidic_Diarrhea]

Listen, this type of approach always gets brought up whenever someone is discussing consoles. Sure, you can buy the console for $500 (no idea what it will cost) and they might lose $200 because it cost them $700 to make. But if they don't sell the console to you, then they lose $700 because it is just sitting in a warehouse, unsold. Honestly, I see this type of threat made all the time. Think about the economics of it just a little bit.

Re:Fair use?

[FatAlb3rt]

7. Once you opened the package, you couldn't return it after you discovered they were left-handed pens... and your left arm had be severed in a terrible schmelting accident.

Re:Fair use?

[duffhuff]

Amazon.com would own the patent to writing with them.

Would that be One-Click Writing?

Okay okay, that was bad.

Re:Fair use?

[Anonymous Coward]

But if they don't sell the console to you, then they lose $700 because it is just sitting in a warehouse, unsold.

Umm, no it won't---it just won't get made. Have you ever heard of inventory control? The only times people tend to get stuck with inventory is when someone vastly overestimates the demand, and when there is a sudden, unexpected dropoff in demand. If people buy the unit as a political statement, neither case is going to happen.

Think about the economics of it just a little bit.

Think about the reality of it a little bit.

I will give you this. The idea of blowing $500 just to make a statement is kind of silly. It's better to spend that money on something that does reflect your values.

Re:Fair use?

[Tom7]

Yeah, but think about all the pen makers that need to feed their families.
Disabling your pen-chain so that it can be used in many places throughout the house will make them go hungry!

Re:Fair use?

[Jason Earl]

They're not selling you a computer for you to use at your discretion.

This is why the Phantom will fail. The folks at Phantom are selling you PC hardware from which they have removed a great deal of the functionality. By the time the Phantom starts rolling out you will be able to buy a "real" PC for the $400 that the Phantom would cost. This real PC will do everything that the Phantom does (thanks to the new XBox-Live-style PC gaming service that Microsoft is working on), and it will do PC-type stuff as well.

Re:Fair use?

[SN74S181]

And your pen would surrepititously write information about what you wrote and send it to the manufacturer whenever you 'upgraded' the ink cartridge.

Wow. They must be putting a lot more 'smarts' in inkjet printers since back when I had a DeskJet 500. Has anybody tried to subvert and reuse all that embedded processing power? Maybe we could run Ghostscript in the printer itself.

Re:Fair use?

[Khakionion]

For that matter you are not required to buy a pen either. It's taxed so it is therefore it must not be a necessity

Last I checked, food is a necessity that is taxed. On the other hand, movie tickets are not...

Re:Fair use?

[Jahf]

Except that if you and 1,000,000 friends buy the box but no software and cost the company $200, they're bound to make more and lose more. If no one buys it, sure, they lose $700 on the first round but they don't make any more.

Does my argument have holes? Sure. So does yours.

1) Any company with the financing to pull off a successful game console probably isn't going to notice the damage done by either method.

2) Both methods hurt the distribution channels at least as much as they hurt the manufacturer.

If you want the machine, buy it. If you don't, don't. Economics will sort it out in the end.

Re:Fair use?

[Acidic_Diarrhea]

I hate it when people begin their sentences with "Umm." It's rather low-class.

Anyway, companies (not people as you put it) are stuck with extra inventory all the time. You are correct that they are only stuck with warehouses full when there is a huge error but the fact remains that when we are dealing with whether one person is going to buy the console, if that one unit is not purchased, it is not guaranteed to sell. In fact, they may estimate that they will sell 100,000 units. By not purchasing that one unit, they sell 99,999 - and are stuck with an extra unit. It happens quite often. You're talking about companies getting stuck with thousands. You think about the reality of that. And spending $500 doesn't make a statement - it merely gives the company $500.

And if you want to see a company stuck with excess inventory - go into EB and ask for a Dreamcast. There are plenty lying around.

Re:Fair use?

[EinarH]

I think you, misunderstood my post.
I'm not going to buy it merly to inflict economical damages on them because of their business modell etc.

My point was that; If I want this box, and the price is right(for me and my wallet) I will buy it and run Linux whether they like it or not.

Re:Fair use?

[Acidic_Diarrhea]

Yes, you're right - if 1,000,001 did purchase the machine with the intent of never buying any software for it, the company would overextend and go into a much larger hole. Of course, that's not going to happen. We're talking about the role of one person (and the number of people who are going to agree to buy the machine and not the software isn't significant enough so that you can argue all those single people across the country will add up).

As for your points
1. That's what I was saying. It's a silly idea to believe that your purchase or non-purchase makes a different.

Re:Fair use?

[Acidic_Diarrhea]

...merely to inflict economical damages

My point is that you're not inflicting any damages on them by doing this. Do what you will but believing that buy purchasing the machine, you're hurting the company - you are incorrect.

Model only has one l in it.

Re:Fair use?

[gallen1234]

*I'll* definitely vote with my wallet. How do you propose to convince the millions of people who have no idea what DRM is to do the same?

As much as it pains me to say this perhaps there's nothing to convince them of. If the general consumers purchase the system and don't find the restrictions offensive and recommend the systems to their friends and coworkers who also don't find the restrictions offensive then the market will have spoken. While it's possible that the first wave of consumers will buy the product, find its limtiations intolerable and inform their circle of friends I have to concede the very real possibility that the general purpose user just isn't going to care that they can't make a copy of their favorite game and spew it onto the Internet.

So what about backups, you ask? What about them? How often does your mother or brother-in-law back up their current machine? I'll bet you can measure it in years.

And what about when you move to a new ISP? Again, how often does this happen? I've been with my current ISP for years. So have all my relatives. I think this could be overcome with careful marketing that pitches the system as something more akin to video game rentals than a traditional shrink-wrap software purchase. I also don't see the ISP's objecting since it provides a strong degree of lock in for them.

Re:Fair use?

[usotsuki]

In New York State there is no sales tax on food.

Locally the tax on clothing, games, etc. is 8.25%. (Ouch!)

-uso.

Re:Fair use?

[cheezedawg]

I hate it when people begin their sentences with "Umm." It's rather low-class.

This coming from somebody that chose "Acidic_Diarrhea" as their nick...

Re:Fair use?

[EinarH]

Do what you will but believing that buy purchasing the machine, you're hurting the company - you are incorrect.

I don't belive that my purchase of the unit they are selling below necessarily cause economichal damage on them.
My comment about the economic aspect in the situation was about the whole console market. It's alomst impossible to earn money unless you've got ecomics of scale and sell shitloads of games.
A upstart company like this just won't succede.
But if the hardware in the box is good and I can run Linux on it i'll probably buy it.

Re:Fair use?

[RadagastTheMagician]

You need to read Lessig's book : (http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/0465039138)

If the ability to copy an "eBook" or do whatever is only enabled by the technology, whether you have the "right" to do so is irrelevant. The company making the hardware/software implements your "right" in software, and they're telling you you can't. Your rights are now granted by Microsoft, not by the Constitution.

What's worse, even if the DCMA and laws like it are repealed, the hardware/software are still effectively hampering your rights. Even if it is technically "legal" to work around DRM (and the DCMA makes it illegal today), unless you are a skilled programmer, you're still unable to exercise your fair use rights around digital material. This is why DRM is inherently evil.

Re:Fair use?

[JudgeFurious]

I don't think they even hear the big companies saying that DRM is good. I don't think that this even registers in their minds.

Why should it? They don't care and it has no effect on them that they can see. Their kid wants this, it does what he says he wants it to do (plays games) and that's the sum total of it.

I don't think game consoles are where the fight over fair use should be fought. Fight it somewhere else where you stand a chance of winning and getting the common mans attention and then apply it here with the precedent. Or we could lose it here and then have the companies apply the precedent to areas where they have a harder time selling their line.

Re:Fair use?

[crazyphilman]

It's not like this thing is going to be an easy sell, anyway. The three currently marketed game systems (Playstation, XBox, and GameCube) are all state of the art and have great collections of games available. Also, most people who are sufficiently into games to drop a couple of hundreds of bucks on a console *have already done so*.

Given the choice, "Spend two hundred bucks and get a new, unproven console that everyone thinks is a DRM PC" or "Spend two hundred bucks and get four new games for your existing console", which do you think they're going to lean towards? ;)

Re:Fair use?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummmm, I hate it when people blatantly criticize others, it's rather low-class and rude.

Re:Fair use?

[rworne]

You know, this method has worked in the past...

Remember the Iopener from Netpliance? The bitty-PC with a built-in LCD that required you to use their proprietary ISP?

Once someone found out how to make it a regular PC, it really put a crimp in their plans. Those units were sold at a significant loss in the hopes of making it up in subscription fees. It later turned out more people were buying it to mod into cheap Linux boxes and MP3 players than to use it for sending email to grandma.

Re:Fair use?

[Archfeld]

Not only that if the marketing drones pick up on the fact that what junior does in the back room while you are out playing cards could end you in a BIG LEGAL MESS, unless of course junior is playing on our 'protected' system, this might even become a marketing PLUS :(

Re:Fair use?

[maomoondog]

Yeah, but it's just sad to think my tax dollars could get spent by the justice department enforcing the protection of some moron's DRM business model.

Re:Fair use?

[kaltkalt]

Isn't that what government is for?

Re:Fair use?

[Anonymous Coward]

Man, you must be the densest motherfucker on this whole site full of retards.

Re:Fair use?

[Wog]

Try Tennessee...

If I recall correctly, it's either 9.25% or 9.75%.

It's enough that you can easily do rought tax estimates in your head by adding a tenth. It's shameful.

Re:Fair use?

[Danse]

If the chain was considered to be a copy-protection device, then it would be illegal to remove it.

Re:Fair use?

[gerbache]

Tennessee's sales tax varies from county to county, but generally ranges from 9.25-10%. It is really sad that sales tax here is so high, but it's currently our primary manner of taxation. The trouble is that more and more people are buying their expensive goods on the internet from places that do not charge a Tennessee sales tax (myself included), so our tax revenue is falling every year. This is what's caused most of our annual budget crises and prompted all the cuts in our education system.. Oh the joys of outdated tax systems...

Re:Fair use?

[nanojath]

I don't understand how fair use got so screwed up like this.

My opinion is that it got so screwed up because it was never that well-defined in the first place. My reading of the core copyright legislation revealed a definition of fair use (such as it existed) that was very limited and very vague.

For the most part the pratical parameters of Fair Use were defined by judicial precedent, and were more about what you couldn't be stopped from doing. You couldn't be stopped from videotaping television, ripping CDs to your computer, etc. But it was never really established that copyright owners HAD to make sure these options were available to you.

Along comes the DMCA, the other thing that happened to fair use, such as it is. The DMCA says, it's illegal to disable tools designed to protect content. It doesn't make fair use per se illegal... for example, I can still make an analog copy of a DRM CD (if I bought such things) with my cassette recorder. And I could rip it to my hard drive... that would be legal... except, oops! I can't legally get to the information to do so.

I think that what is primarily wrong with this is that it violates a constitutional principle called prior restraint. Prior restraint says, you cannot reasonably prevent someone from doing something that is itself legal because you believe it is leading to an illegal activity. A man drives to a bar and gets drunk. You can't arrest him at the door with his car keys in hand because it is legal to get drunk and even though you assume he will drive home he hasn't done anything illegal until he gets in the car.

The DMCA gets around this principle by making the formerly legal action (breaking encryption etc) illegal. This is a fine line - it shouldn't be allowed unless there is no significant legal justification for the activity. As the 2600 case showed, at least in that limited case the court was not ready to accept that people had a justification to break CSS on DVDs, which is an unfortunate precedent. Eventually I think a DMCA case must go to the Supreme Court and then we'll see.

And that's what's happened to fair use.

Re:Fair use?

[gooddope]

I wish you had not linked me to that. I now know it is there and will always know that it was made. You made my life a little worse today. Thanks a lot.

Re:Fair use?

[zapp]

I know, I know... I'll probably get modded Troll for this. Oh well. I do agree with the points you made though.

- Anything you tried to create and sell with your pen would instantly be copied by the rest of the pen community and redistributed without any credit towards you

- Every 3 years a new pen would come out that was somehow better, and even though the previous pens still did their job, everyone feels the need to buy the new pen. Of course, the old one will still be available for 1/2 the price... but who would want it?

Re:Fair use?

[red floyd]

It's a product with a specific end-use, dude. They're not selling you a wrench (or a pen) and telling you not to use it. They're selling you their product, a game system. They're not selling you a computer for you to use at your discretion -- even though that's what it's made of.

Faulty argument, Jason.

GM sells me a product with a specific end-use. Specifically, for ground transportation.

If I want to do something completely different with it, such as carve it up for sculpture, or make it into a planter, or seal it up so it can be used as a boat, GM has absolutely no say in that.

I can do whatever the hell I want to do with it.

Re:Fair use?

[calethix]

whew. At least I can still make a spring loaded gun to shoot people that enforce #1-6.

Re:Fair use?

[Bakaneko]

That's the whole point of voting with your wallet. You get your one vote, and everybody else gets there's. You don't like it? You don't buy it, and if there's enough people like you, then the statement is made, and if it there's not, then it obviously isn't the will of the people. It isn't about you trying to propigate your "vote" by getting other people to think like you. Hmm, actually, in a lot of ways, this is what's wrong with current political thought in America.

You can talk about an "educated electorate" and I agree that people need to have the facts about what DRM really means for them (as in what it prevents them from doing, and what it requires of them to do.) but I also think its essential that it doesn't get presented in a "they're trying to control your thoughts, man" kind of way. Present the facts, the actual consequences, and let opinions fall where they may.

Re:Fair use?

[appleLaserWriter]

5. The ink would run out at predetermined time and only refills made by the company would work.

Have you ever used a refillable ink pen? I just upgraded from a $25 Lamy roller ball pen to a $95 Rotring fountain pen. The Lamy takes $6 refills, while a well of ink for the Rotring costs $7. At my rate of consumption, I need a new roler ball refill every three weeks. When I last had a fountain pen, it took me a year to use half of an ink well.

Now the Lamy and Rotring pens are very expensive compared to your average bic stic, probably due to the much lower volume of premium pens sold compared to bics. Baron Bich's pens enabled him to putter around the world in his yacht with about 80,000 bottles of fine wine onboard (some from his vinyard) and play games like America's Cup.

6. Only the purchaser may use the pen.

Fountain pen users rarely let anyone else touch their pen. It is widely believed that a gold-nibbed pin will mold itself to the user's style of writing. And you thought only PDAs needed handwriting training!

Re:Fair use?

[Deflagro]

Man, i was just thinking that! Funny.

What the hell is it with this wait 20 seconds bullshit, that is irritating.

Re:Fair use?

[zdislaw]

I hate it when people begin their sentences with "Umm." It's rather low-class.

And starting a sentence with "Anyway," is some kind of new level of high-class?

Umm...I don't think so. ;)

Re:Fair use?

[Khakionion]

Guess I should have qualified my reply. *sigh* Yes, I live in Arkansas.....

Re:Fair use?

[Giggles Of Doom]

This almost has a ring simular to the whole Circuit City DivX (not the codec) thing. The nice thing about current game boxes and PCs is that if you cancel your XBox Live! accout or turn off your internet, you are still left with something you can run games on or keep an electronic diary. With this thing, if you stop paying for service you end up with a junk box full of parts that probably aren't usable anywhere else. That's $400, how much ever you spent on games, and how much you've spent on the subscription down the drain. I could understand having a system where you pay for the box, pay to download the games to the box (cheaper then buying it on CD), and then get to play it forever. Add in an online gameplay charge like everyone else and its all fine and dandy.

Re:Fair use?

[jandrese]

The law does not protect poor business plans, it does however, protect the right to fair use and the right to reverse engineer.

Re:Fair use?

[Virtex]

Maybe not a software company, but Logitech sells a pen. And yes, it only works with Logitech paper.

Re:Fair use?

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that your pen can't be duplicated infinitely many times at costs approaching zero. If you give it to your friend, you don't have a pen anymore, ie fair use, hence the paucity of chains on pens.

Re:Fair use?

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone who calls themselves "Acidic Diarrhea" calling someone else "low-class" because of how they type. That is rich. And starting sentences with "and" is improper.

Re:Fair use?

[InferiorFloater]

This is the one thing for which I see a use for the DMCA. Encrypt this sort of evil, diabolical music, and sue the straight bejeezus out of anyone that tries to decrypt it for future generations to suffer to. It's a crime against humanity that Leonard Nimoy's "Highly Illogical" is now preserved for posterity - that's the sort of dangerous material that should be buried forever, only to be unearthed by supervillians.

Re:Fair use?

[int2str]

Can't believe you forgot this one:

- Every once in a while the ink cartridge would just blow up and ruin the document you've been working on for the last hour...

Re:Fair use?

[whmac33]

But isn't there no state income tax in Tenn?

Re:Fair use?

[The Almighty Dave]

You are clearly mistaken. I am the densest motherfucker on this whole site full of retards.

Re:Fair use?

[drdale]

It is a little too simplistic to simply say either "Fair use!" or "Then don't buy it!" Yes, you have a legal right to fair use of copyrighted materials. However, the whole idea of a contract is that you give up certain rights to get other rights in exchange. When you buy copyrighted material, one right you give up is the right to a sum of money. But there is nothing in the concept of a contract to say that you can't be required to give up any of your other rights as well, including your right to fair use. Do we as a society want to let the holders of copyrighted material make it available to consumers only on the condition that they agree to such a contract? People who say "Just don't buy it" say yes; they have faith that if the terms of the contract are lousy then consumers will be enlightened enough to stay away. Eventually, though competition, the companies will be forced to offer better terms. It is a question of whether consumers are smart enough to pass up a bad deal, and whether there is enough competition that if one company requires an unreasonable contract another will offer a comparable product on better terms. I've got a moderate amount of faith in competition myself, but I'm not a libertarian zealot either. If book and periodical publishers started to require alienation of fair use rights as a condition of purchase, I'd be ready for the government to step in and say "You just can't do that." I don't know about other kinds of material.

Re:Fair use?

[Anonymous Coward]

The DRM laws prohibiting a consumer from tinkering with his purchased hardware are right and just, or wrong and unjust, regardless of whether I personally choose to purchase this product.

Re:Fair use?

[Moofie]

Ummm, do you want a cookie or something?

Re:Fair use?

[Moofie]

Well, you're not going to get the "spend 200 bucks on this stupid console." According to the article, you'll get to spend $400.

And $9.95/mo to your ISP for bandwidth.
And whatever prices the game companies decide to charge.

Gosh, this deal just gets better and better! I can't wait!

Re:Fair use?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's rather low-class.

Now that you are giving out pointers on how to be classy, do you have any other suggestions for me, Mr Acidic Diarrhea?

Re:Fair use?

[Trolling4Dollars]

Present the facts, the actual consequences, and let opinions fall where they may.

I agree. However, it is impossible to escape the problem of there being multiple views on an issue. Everyone has an agenda (myself included). This is one of the problems of being human. For example, my agenda in relation to the DRM topic is that I believe that computing is a human right and that there should be absolutely no restrictions on what someone can do with that right. Especially when some people would try to assert control over that right in order to gain a tactical advantage. If DRM were really about protecting the copyright holders (the original creator of a published product) then I wouldn't have as much of a problem with it. But as it stands, the people who stand to gain from DRM are not the coders, the musicians, the actors, etc... It's the corporate entities that have unfair equal footing with an individual. In that light, DRM is a no win for the average person whether they are interested in the topic or not.

Re:Fair use?

[dasmegabyte]

Dude, I'd like to point out that I *NEVER* back up my data. Any of it. I consider a hard drive loss a way of figuring out what was really important to me.

Oh, except writing. I back that up by printing it out. Or postin it to slashdot.

Re:Fair use?

[Anonymous Coward]

And every time you start writing this damn paperclip would pop out of nowhere and say, "I see you're writting a letter"

Re:Fair use?

[anon*127.0.0.1]

Yeah, but the $700 charge for an unsold console is for a relatively small amout of units if they don't move. They won't keep making units forever if they're not selling any of them. Whereas the $200 cost for a sold unit could be a much larger total if they sell a bunch of them.

Re:Fair use?

[deadhammer]

Quit yer bitching people, you haven't begun seen tax. I live in Ontario, Canada. Not only do we have the federal 7% GST (Goods and Sales Tax), but we also have 8% PST (Provincial Sales Tax). They're both applied. That's 15% people! And it applies to just about everything, food included. No, I'm not terribly happy about it. :(

Re:Fair use?

[Billly Gates]

"It's a crime against humanity that Leonard Nimoy's "Highly Illogical" is now preserved for posterity "

Oh?You aint seen nothing if you think that is bad. Now this one will require a lobatomy.

Re:Fair use?

[Anonymous Coward]

$95 pen? Are you that big of a fucking moron? Those lovely free pens I used to get from college orientations work nice and the ink looks the same on the paper anyways :)

Re:Fair use?

[PerspexAvenger]

Marvel at VAT in the EU - 17.5% on many, many things.

Chew, swallow, and experience that bitter taste...

Re:Fair use?

[crazyphilman]

Hmm... 400.00 plus 10 bucks a month (over a year, that's 120 bucks, so figure a total of 520.00). I was assuming the price for the new console would drop down to the going price, which is right around 200, but they'd probably be stubborn about the 400 for a while, so let's use that instead.

For 520 bucks, I could get 10 games, plus a case of beer. Or, eight brand-new games and six used games for a total of fourteen. Since I already have a Playstation and an XBox (which has online gaming through XBox Live) I think I'd go for the games instead.

Plus, did you notice? The new, weirdo console requires you to *DOWNLOAD* games. Suuuuuuure, I'd LOVE to download a couple GB a pop (remember, consoles use DVDs, not CDs). That sounds like a GREAT idea...

The whole thing seems particularly dubious to me.

Restrictions

[ranolen]

Why are companies putting restrictions on everything you buy now??? Last time I checked, when you buy something it's yours. This is getting stupid.

Re:Restrictions

[NanoGator]

In this particular case, they're trying to make money on games. After watching all the people trying to crack the XBOX to use it as a cheap PC, you can bet they're startled about it.

That's one sore spot with me over the whole XBOX hacking project, they validated the need for business to have DRM. You can bet future consoles will have it too.

Re:Restrictions

[Chess_the_cat]

Last time I checked, when you buy something it's yours. This is getting stupid.

When was the last time you checked?

Re:Restrictions

[Meat Blaster]

In a way, I think they're also validating the concept that some hardcore gamers would like to have hardware they can tinker with and homebrew games for that also doesn't forbid them from running imports. I don't remember the name, but I thought there was a company that was going to fill this niche that was a casualty of the dotcom crash. Kind of a pity they went under, because it sounded like the hardware (which they planned to make money on) would be the catalyst to some really great development.

Who would want this?

[Anonymous Coward]

By those specs, there are no selling points to this box.

Re:Who would want this?

[DrWho520]

Not only do the specs appear...lacking, but this set depends upon a broadband connection. So sales are already limited to the number of people with broadband. Those people with broadband who are interested in using it for gaming already have existing solutions in the form of pre-existing consoles, already including one from M$.

I do not care how big your library is, I like to have my games in my hands. How am I supposed to loan my buddy my Metroid Prime or GTA3? I cannot with this business model.

The article makes a point of Roberts being a family man and the Phantom being a way to protect small children from the evils of violent gaming (how?). The box costs $400. I just do not think that price tag will fly today for parents buying a game system for small children. GCN has the most kid games, is the cheapest system on the market, and a little bit time by parents picking out games does the same thing.

I wonder how much of the $400 is attributed to the cost of XP?

Re:Who would want this?

[Anonymous Coward]

If they negotiated an OEM agreement it's somewhere between $50 and $100 depending on volume projections.

online good, copyright bad!

[Thinkit3]

It'd be great to get away from physical media--anything that does away with pointless jobs is good. Copyright, of course is bad. Overall a step forward.

So it's a crappy Xbox?

[Megor1]

So it's like an Xbox (Really a PC)but you have to download all yours games...

Re:So it's a crappy Xbox?

[bsharitt]

I'm guessing that after reading the story, Microsoft is scrambling to revise to XBOX2.

Re:So it's a crappy Xbox?

[Anonymous Coward]

So it's like an Xbox (Really a PC)but you have to download all yours games...

No difference then...

Re:So it's a crappy Xbox?

[StingRayGun]

Damn! Finally somebody agrees with me! I have been modded down for claiming Xbox is just a PC without the ability to upgrade stuff. You just earned a fan, im doing it right now.

This "console," doesn't stand a chance in the US. Maybe in Korea where the broadband reach is bigger, but not here. The Xbox will someday look like this, and maybe even the PS2, but I hope there will always be a market for a real, hard-drive-less, game console out there. After dealing with PCs all day at work, I love to fire-up a toy (GameCube) at home.

I guess I wouldn't mind playing Zelda, Metroid, Sunshine, Madden, or FIFA online though.

Re:So it's a crappy Xbox?

[Anonymous Coward]

I already download all my games, but with this I wouldn't have to beg some 13 year old named "B33tChSm4x0r" to resume the iso after his fserve went down because his mom wanted to check her mail.

Re:So it's a crappy Xbox?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, so true.

Can't get stuff off?

[Delphix]

Just like you can't get into the XBOX...

the only thing...

[sulli]

the only thing that differentiates this 'game console' from a standard, Windows-running PC is that it has no way to get data on or off of it except through a dedicated connection to Infinium Labs' own servers.

Yet.

Re:the only thing...

[Anonymous Coward]

plus the fact that if you try to open it up or modify it or grab data from the hard drive, bad things will happen, starting with violation of the terms under which you will lease or purchase the Phantom.

But the real question is, when does a purchase cease being your personal property?

Re:the only thing...

[arbitrary nickname]

But the real question is, when does a purchase cease being your personal property?

The moment it has a single byte of copyrightable software in it :(

Re:the only thing...

[duffhuff]

Indeed.

Unless there is some special hardware, say, in the chipset, what's to prevent me from simply removing the drive, placing it in another computer, and formatting it?

This is basically another X-Box. It may or may not have signed code protection, or BIOS encryption, or whatever, but I don't see a huge difference. The connection to their servers could be a problem however. It'd be a great firewall / router / media center once cracked.

And what do I do if I don't have an internet connection, let alone a fast one? I'd be pretty screwed if all I had were "pre-loaded" games to play. No CD-ROM does not a game console make.

Re:the only thing...

[EvilSporkMan]

And what do I do if I don't have an internet connection, let alone a fast one? I'd be pretty screwed if all I had were "pre-loaded" games to play. No CD-ROM does not a game console make. You go get a Playstation 2 like everyone else. They seem to be taking MS's theory about dial-up users (who needs them on Xbox Live?)and taking it one step further to ignore everyone with no Internet access. Personally, my next console will probably be the PlayStation 3, assuming it's backward-compatible with PSX and PS2 and it's a console, not an "entertainment center". This just occurred to me though: if the "Xbox2" is backward-compatible with software and peripherals, I'll get that and use mine Xbox as a PC =D

Re:the only thing...

[GT_Alias]

what's to prevent me from simply removing the drive, placing it in another computer, and formatting it?

Maybe I'm missing something, but why would you want to do this? Wouldn't the point be to crack the encryption mechanism so that you could perform I/O on the system at will? What you're talking about sounds like paying $400 for a gaming console just so you can yank the hard-drive.

Re:the only thing...

[OneEyedApe]

I think the point here is the challenge. And the satisfaction a pasty geek gets from striking back at an "evil corporation" from the comfort and safety of their parent's basement.

weird

[Boromir son of Faram]

I have trouble believing that any game companies are going to pony up development costs and then not release an identical product for normal PCs. At which point, why buy the console?

Seems like they came up with the product by drawing up a list of things it won't do. Well, add another item to that list: it won't sell.

Re:weird

[CaptainSuperBoy]

It looks like they are hoping the subscription model and large library will appeal to an untapped market of casual gamers, who might not pony up $50 per game but would happily pay a subscription fee for access to a bunch of games.

Re:weird

[retto]

What about upgrades? Is that going to be something else it won't do? If I lease it, I expect to get an updated one when game requirements change. Would the video card handle Doom3 or Half-Life 2? If you buy it, are you going to need to buy a new every year or so?

Doesn't Yahoo have a games on demand service for PCs close to this, but with less hassle? For consoles why not rent the games?

I can see their arguement about cheaper games, but if I wait a little while most PC games drop down to around $25-30. I'd rather do that, and OWN the damn game.

Re:weird

[rusty0101]

From what I read in the article, it wouldn't matter if the game were released for the PC market, as it is extreamly unlikely to ever hit a store shelf in any case.

Of course what the person putting toghether this product misses, is that just because you can't find a copy at BB, CC, EB, or GS, doesn't mean that it won't be available at online retailers, or on e-bay.

From there perhaps it will garner a tremendous online following, perhaps.

-Rusty

Re:weird

[PainKilleR-CE]

Plus, at least around here, Blockbuster and Hollywood video both have deals where you can rent games for $20/month, as many games as you want, as long as you want, as long as you only keep one out at a time (in other words, roughly equivalent to what they would've gotten if you rented 4 games a month anyway, but you could turn in that game that took you 2 hours to get sick of and get another one without paying more, or you could keep that game that's taking you a few more days to finish without paying late fees).

Not only that, but the XBox (and probably the PS2 with the hard drive add-on) could do downloadable game subscriptions anyway, if they could come up with the DRM to keep you from copying the game from the hard drive once you downloaded it.

I might be willing to pay $15 or $20 a month to have access to a selection of games downloadable over the internet connection (I did it with my Genesis, but that was my parents' money at the time), but not at the exclusion of being able to buy a game and have it on a DVD to play whenever I want without paying anything else (or being able to wait 6 months and picking the game up for $20).

Re:weird

[Jason Earl]

Yeah, casual gamers are going to plop down $400 on a console that requires a $10 a month service fee to play games that you have to purchase separately. Oh, and you have to pay separately for broadband. Anyone that thinks that this is likely might want to invest in my specially-reinforced upside-down umbrella I invented just in case it happens to start raining money.

Let's face it. The "kiddie" game market is currently being cornered by flash games at places like nickjr.com. No parent is going to pay Phantom prices for what is basically a disabled PC when they can buy a fully functional PC for less.

Never mind the fact that they need three quarters of a million users before they even break even. That's insane. What kind of overhead do these guys have? They don't manufacture the boxes, they don't make the games, and Windows XP takes care of most of the software.

This farce doesn't have a prayer.

Re:weird

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what I've been asking all along about the XBox. Maybe the games arrive late for the PC, but it seems like most of them eventually arrive for the PC sooner or later.

Re:weird

[CaptainSuperBoy]

I know, when I saw that 750,000 statistic the first thing I thought was you'd have to be insane to invest in that company. There is no way they are going to reach that number. If there is a number that high in the normally optimistic pre-launch hype, something is seriously wrong.

Re:weird

[Tokerat]

I'd rather do that, and OWN the damn game.

*license.

Re:weird

[mpthompson]

Yeah, casual gamers are going to plop down $400 on a console that requires a $10 a month service fee to play games that you have to purchase separately.

Even worse, the consumer purchasing the unit is making a $400 bet the service won't go out of business three months later leaving them with a DRM enabled paper weight.

Re:weird

[Jason Earl]

Excellent point. This particular business model would be ridiculous no matter who was behind it. The fact that it is the brainchild of a startup that no one has heard of makes the idea even more ridiculous.

Heck, Phantom's idea isn't that different from Microsoft's XBox strategy (except, of course, that Microsoft doesn't have to pay itself licensing fees to use Windows). Microsoft has flushed billions down the toilet trying to get the XBox to fly. The paltry $25 Million that Phantom has is literally a drop in the bucket.

uh huh...

[Anonymous Coward]

Just had to fit a MS slam into this article somehow eh?

Looking into the future...

[FrostedWheat]

I predict only phantom sales for this ... thing.

Re:Looking into the future...

[standsolid]

or maybe we'll get a cool new wor dto describe those sucky dying OSS projects

phantomware

Watch out...

[Anonymous Coward]

You'll need at least a Pentium III to view the site.

I tried to enter on my 586, and it didn't let me.

Re:Watch out...

[WTFmonkey]

And it's loaded with pain in the ass redirects to try and steal your back button.

Re:Watch out...

[Hank Scorpio]

Well, I have better than a Pentium III (Sun UltraSparc) and it still didn't let me view the site. Something about Flash 6. Blech. All I have is Flash 5, and that's not good enough for them!

Right... an XBox knockoff?

[pv2b]

Hm.

This seems suspiciously similar to a Microsoft XBox. This means that it would be exceedingly cool if it could actually be made to run XBox games.

Then you could run XBox Linux on this Phantom game console and err... yes.

Not -that- surprising, I guess.

[Meat Blaster]

We're rapidly approaching the point where consoles are pointless. Commodity hardware is cheaper, computers offer a far superior gaming experience, and the current leader in the field got its legs dominating the PC market. This just sounds like that convergence thing they were always expecting.

What with Media PCs picking up acceptance, I wouldn't be surprised to see a game/network/PVR combo soon.

Re:Not -that- surprising, I guess.

[radish]

current leader in the field got its legs dominating the PC market

I assume you mean Xbox? You must come from some other planet where "3rd best selling out of 3" equates to "leader in the field".

Re:Not -that- surprising, I guess.

[gradius3]

Yea, I'm sure the $9.4 billion dollar gaming industry (IDSA's 2002 figure) was all computer games. Beside nobody I know owns an XBox, PSII or Gamecube. Seems like everyone's running out and buying a new pc for the latest and greatest games, oh wait...

Re:Not -that- surprising, I guess.

[Winterblink]

I think you nailed it on the point about a combo type box coming soon (who knows, maybe that's what the Phantom is, given that the site tells you fuck all about what the damn box is supposed to be really). I disagree about consoles going away though. Some people don't want to use their computers for gaming at all, they'd rather sit down and play a quick few levels of Mario or whatever. Not every gamer is a hardcore gamer, there are plenty of casual ones that can't be bothered with the intricacies of maintaining gaming capable PC's.

I agree that some first real attempts at convergence are coming, and probably SHOULD come (I'd love to play PC games on my widescreen TV with a real surround system), but it won't completely get rid of the console market. Not by far.

Just my 2c.

Re:Not -that- surprising, I guess.

[badasscat]

We're rapidly approaching the point where consoles are pointless. Commodity hardware is cheaper, computers offer a far superior gaming experience, and the current leader in the field got its legs dominating the PC market.

Except for that last part (which is 100% false to begin with), people have been saying this for at least 20 years. There's always been a leapfrog thing going on between consoles and PC's. You look at the PS2 now and say "a cheap PC can do those graphics better" - then when PS3 is unveiled, you'll wonder if PC graphics will ever catch up again. 4 years later, the cycle will repeat. Just the way it is.

You could argue just as easily that consoles have become commidities. Practically everybody has one, and they're cheap enough now that almost anyone that can afford a TV can afford a game console (adjusted for inflation, my Intellivision cost $900 in today's dollars in 1980, compared to $180 for a PlayStation 2 or Xbox or $149 for a GameCube). Plus, the economics of the industry are such that there's no way dedicated consoles are ever going away - all consoles really are are mini-PC's with their own DRM, and it's always been that way going back to the Atari 2600 (which used off-the-shelf computer parts - the reason why Activision was able to successfully argue in court that they did not need a license to produce third-party games for the system). Back in the cartridge days the DRM was physical - it was exceedingly expensive to produce your own cartridges and required a lot of technological knowhow. Sure, we didn't call it DRM back then, but that's what it was, and nobody ever complained about it on game consoles. Today, the DRM is software-based, but the concept is the same - you can only play these games on one specific device, and you can't easily copy them. It's the DRM, the stable, predictable hardware platform and the co-branding that attracts developers and publishers, and Infinium understands maybe 2/3 of that. What they don't understand is that without a big name and lots of money to promote both the system and individual games (including third-party games), there's not a compelling reason for a publisher to want to associate themselves with the Phantom.

As to your last statement, I would gather from your comment that you assume Microsoft is the "current leader" in the game console arena. MS is a very distant second to Sony - very distant, and further distant than they were a year ago (MS's sales have dropped year to year, while Sony's have risen). I'm talking a 4 to 1 difference. And they're losing buckets of money on the system. Experience in the PC arena is certainly no guarantee of success in the console arena - they're two different markets, and if you don't understand that difference you will get trounced by the rest of the game industry. Infinium seems to "get" part of it, but I don't see that they have either the will or the way to really get big-name publishers on board with this system, and I don't think they necessarily understand exactly what consumers want, either (the whole broadband download thing).

Re:Not -that- surprising, I guess.

[PhoenixFlare]

Commodity hardware is cheaper

Please show me a computer built for $149.99 + tax that can pump out the same level of graphics detail, texturing, and framerate that my GameCube does. Oh, and you'd have to give people a $50 game and a joypad free to match it at the moment, too.

computers offer a far superior gaming experience

Speak for yourself...I'm guessing you don't actually own a console. I won't go into a huge listing, but there are many, many quality console games out there that beat the hell out of any PC games.

and the current leader in the field got its legs dominating the PC market

They may be leading in sales right now, but I don't think that'll last forever. Seems like a bit of an ominous sign that the XBox has barely been out a year, and yet they've had to cut the selling price almost in half to stay competitive already.

What with Media PCs picking up acceptance, I wouldn't be surprised to see a game/network/PVR combo soon.

Whatever happened to using a game console/device/whatever you call it for games? I don't want an everything-box, thank you.

Re:Not -that- surprising, I guess.

[PoopJuggler]

If you go to Dell.com all the PCs are like $600-$1000 with a 15" monitor. How is this cheaper or better than a $150 GameCube, which you can play on your 50" HD Plasma TV with super surround sound system, no hardware conflicts, no driver problems, just plug and play..?

Or did you mean building a krappy komputer yourself from parts you got at the local Korean Computer Discount Mart or Fry's Sucktronics? Putting it all in a case, finding drivers for everything, installing operating systems and applications, configuring network shit, then debugging it all over again. This is definately within the skill level of your average 40-something single-mom-who-just-wants-to-let-her-kid-play-some -Mario type consumer.

I think you should start a business selling instructions on how to do this and see if you can overthrow Nintendo and Sony in the videogame business...

Re:Not -that- surprising, I guess.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know. When I read the sentence I associated leader in the field to computers or maybe even commodity hardware. I am not sure how you related it to game consoles since that isn't even in the sentence. I would also point out that in current sales Xbox and GameCube are pretty much neck to neck but both are dwarfed by Playstation.

Re:Not -that- surprising, I guess.

[FesterDaFelcher]

Backk in the cartridge days the DRM was physical - it was exceedingly expensive to produce your own cartridges and required a lot of technological knowhow I was the coolest kid on my block because my dad used an soldered a removable IC module on an old cassette. He then copied the ICs. All you had to do was plop a new IC on to the top of the cartridge. We had 100's (were there that many) of games for the Atari.

Re:Not -that- surprising, I guess.

[Mr_Silver]

I assume you mean Xbox? You must come from some other planet where "3rd best selling out of 3" equates to "leader in the field".

I read a while back (not sure where) that in Europe the XBox was 2nd best selling console after the Playstation (obviously). I can't talk for the US or Asia but I would assume the Gamecube is strong in the latter and the XBox a bit of a non-starter.

In fact, in the UK, retailers are dropping prices so drastically in an attempt to get rid of them. Both Argos and Dixon's (two big retailers) have announced the desire to get rid of their stock and not refresh it.

Funnily enough, Argos was discounting it's Gamecube so much that it was actually cheaper to purchase it and a copy of Metroid Prime than it was to pick up the Nintendo official bundle.

Re:Not -that- surprising, I guess.

[retto]

The best PC games and the best console games usually don't compare. I like both console and PC gaming, and I hate it when argue over apples and oranges.

Sports, platformers, racing, and fighting are often best on the console.

RPGs, FPS, strategy (especially RTS), and flight sims are best on the PC.

Of course there are exceptions. Some prefer Madden on the PC, and others think the Final Fantasy games are great RPGs.

What I don't get about the Phantom is that if it hooks up to a TV, how many people are going to want to play something like Rise of Nations in low-rez?

Re:Not -that- surprising, I guess.

[matlokheed]

Wow. Where to start.

"We're rapidly approaching the point where consoles are pointless. Commodity hardware is cheaper,"

A gaming machine costs up to $200. A video card can run you up to $500 and is on non-standard hardware, so may not work with any particular game.

"computers offer a far superior gaming experience"

Maybe to you. Most PC games can't compete with the above average console game in my mind. Too many MMORPG, FPS, RTS games coming out. Not enough "Animal Crossing", RPGs, or just generally different stuff coming out for PCs. The feel is just different on a console and the PCs have very little for me.

"and the current leader in the field got its legs dominating the PC market."

Sony? The Vaio is pretty to look at but nothing substantial. Unless you're referring to Microsoft which is currently big bad #3 in the world out of 3.

Computer game sales are waaaaay behind console game sales. Saying consoles are becoming pointless is like saying communism is on the rise because it hasn't been completely eradicated yet.

It wasn't long ago that a physical store that mostly sold computer games could exist. Now, you see a small rack of computer games at your local EB. I think we're watching the rise of consoles as /videogames/ are becoming more and more accepted.

Re:Not -that- surprising, I guess.

[Ceadda]

Well for starters stop shopping at dell, eveyone knows they sell products with an extra couple hundred dollars pasted on the price. A $500 video card! OMG.. what're you buying, a 512Mb ram 1.5ghz processor card! You can get a G-Force 4600 on sale for $149 if you u watch the papers, and theres nothing wrong with the graphics in that. And I cant remember the last time a video card didnt work with specific games... And excuse us that a few of us actually wanna play games in a resolution above that of a Television, with online play that doesnt cost us extra per month and come with tiles like "LIVE!"...

Re:Not -that- surprising, I guess.

[scot4875]

Maintaining a 'gaming capable PC' doesn't make you a hardcore gamer, it makes you a hardware nut. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it's just a completely different thing.

If you want to be a hardcore gamer, just play lots of (read: variety) games. You don't have to have an uber-l337 gaming PC to be a hardcore gamer.

And besides, I'll take my 34" widescreen pro-scan TV and Denon AVR 2803-driven surround system from the comfort of my couch over my PC any day.

--Jeremy

Re:Not -that- surprising, I guess.

[Malick23]

Xbox is winning by a two to one margin in NA and Europe. Its getting killed in Japan but that was to be expected.

Back on topic though, what do you think will leave a bigger crater when it crashes, This or the 3DO.

Re:Not -that- surprising, I guess.

[scot4875]

computers offer a far superior gaming experience

Here's my typical PC gaming experience:
Sit at desk in front of nice 19" monitor.
Install game
Oops, leeched too many NewsRadio episodes off of Gnutella. Need to move some files between drives to free up space.
Get back to installing game
Patch game, because it doesn't work right out of box
Finally, sit and play in ultra-beautiful high resolution graphics with my pretty decent PC sound system.

Typical console gaming experience:
Sit in my comfy couch
Enable Pro-scan mode in game (if it supports it)
Turn on badass PLII surround system that makes my PC speakers sound like walkie-talkies
Enjoy latest must-have title (which have been lacking in the last couple months for my Gamecube ... sigh... End of July should be good, though)

Personally, I'll take the console experience over the PC experience any day ... Each have their merits, but to say that the PC offers a far superior gaming experience is just dumb. Maybe if you've got a $75 19" Wal-Mart special TV vs. a $1500-2000 gaming PC ... but for anyone with a decent home theater setup, it's just no contest.

Plus, you can invite chicks over to watch movies on a home theater.

--Jeremy

Re:Not -that- surprising, I guess.

[matlokheed]

Actually, I used the term "up to" in both of my examples which was slightly inaccurate. In English that term means "less than or equal to" and when I go to Ati's site to get a card and on the front page I see the Ati 9800 which is $500. The inaccurate part was that none of the consoles cost $200 right now.

There's nothing wrong with the G-Force 4600 I'm sure. But in a few weeks when I want to play Half Life 2, how is it going to handle it? I want a card that can handle the best games for the given system for the life of the system. For a console, I'm /guaranteed/ that. If I go out and get top of the line video card, I'll be able to play the top games, but maybe not a year from now when my PS2/Gamecube/Xbox is still doing fine with all of their games. If I get the lesser card, I probably won't be able to handle those brand new games at all well.

If you want games that are in better resolution than that of a television, that's perfectly fine. Of course unless your monitor is the size of a TV, you don't have a luxurious amount of space to play on. Personal preference I suppose.

Right now, all that PCs have are the online capabilities. Why do you think all the games being released are MMORPG, RTS or FPS? It's because they lend themselves best to online play. That's why the Xbox hasn't been completely blown out here. They're taking the online market of the people who don't want to play with configurations. It's a small market but it's enough for 2nd place in the US.

PC's will always be around for gaming, but they've been shrinking in comparison to how consoles have grown in popularity.

Re:Not -that- surprising, I guess.

[computechnica]

Not everyone is a Ubergeek and wants to upgrade their computer every 6 months. Consoles are still cheaper than comperable gaming PC's, but that seems to be closing just like the desktop-laptop price gap is.

I work with about 80+ programmers (age range 18-60) and I would say it's about evenly split between console and PC gamers. I personally have 3 gaming PCs and almost every console going back to the Atari 2600, but thats just me. ;^)

Re:Not -that- surprising, I guess.

[YE]

Heh, you wish. The Xbox is wiping the floor with Gamecube in the US. E.g. Infogrames recently published the platform distribution of sales for the Enter The Matrix ... "product". 50% PS2, 25% Xbox, 15% PC, 10% Gamecube. Watch gaming news for a month and you'll see where's the exciting stuff coming. Most PS2 titles the websites rave about have titles like "Kokimichi Gunochi 3" (I hope I didn't come up with something particularly offensive in Japanese) and all the 17 gaijin who played Kokimichi Gunochi 2 are babbling about how good they will be. Microsoft got their foot firmly in the door on this round.

Re:Not -that- surprising, I guess.

[MidnightLightning]

The problem here when people compare PC gaming to console gaming, they do not consider that PC gaming and console gaming really cannot be compared. You see, console gaming is for people who want to play the game for what it is out of the box, without any trouble at all. They want entertainment at little cost and little fuss. Most games work well with this strategy, as I don't believe most gamers are true geeks. That is the typical console gamer.

However, the many PC gamers are quite different (and when I mean PC gamer, I am primarily referring to FPS and secondarily referring to RTS, other types are generally arbitrary in the comparison of platform type). Many FPS game players (at least in my area) tend to get into more of the game than "just playing" it. These types tend to play or develop their own custom levels, or more importantly, play over the Internet with custom levels. While a game could be implemented so that levels are transferred to players who do not have them currently, with the platform dependence of some game's modules (Quake 2, Descent 3) and the size of modern day FPS's mission data files, this strategy would be less than optimal. Plus, FPS games are usually not very playable with gamepads (well, ones with complex controls like Descent), so one would have to have a flightstick anyway. RTS games can also have this problem, alghough on demand map transfer is feasable in this instance. Many FPS games/FPS game markets are not this way, but certain FPS games will always be more enriching on a PC. And those who are really into FPS gaming/development will always be happy to spend the extra dollar for their equipment and console gaming is not enriching enough for them.

In conclusion, there is a huge difference between true console gamers and true PC gamers. Many PC gamers belong on consoles and vice versa. It makes no sense to compare consoles and PCs as they really have separate markets, although many make games that don't belong on the platform that they were developed for. For console gamers, flexibility is not an issue, just as price and usability are not issues for PC gamers.

Re:Not -that- surprising, I guess.

[Bakaneko]

Actually, it's #2 in the US and Europe. #3 (by a loooong shot) in Japan. Overall, they aren't doing so bad.

Re:Not -that- surprising, I guess.

[radish]

Heh, you wish

You know, actually, I don't give a flying fuck :) Buy whatever the hell console you want.

Re:Not -that- surprising, I guess.

[radish]

It's hard to find real figures (unless you can point me some links). You're right about NGC being dropped in some stores here, but no-one realy understands why. The best anyone can come up with is that they are trying to force nintendo to lower the price, which is sensible. Sales boomed massivly when they were discounting - I know I bought 3 NGCs from my local argos for £60 each with a free game, which is just silly. The fact is that although xbox sales do seem to have picked up a fair bit just recently (except japan) they are still both so far behind ps2 as to be laughable. I'm no sony fanboy but there ain't no touching them in either installed base or new sales, and that's with previous gen hardware. That's some marketing...

Re:Not -that- surprising, I guess.

[cvas]

How do the sales of one game show that X-Box is wiping the floor with the Gamecube? I'm not saying it's not, but I don't think sales of a single game, one that probably didn't appeal to what are considered "core" Gamecube users, proves one console is better than the others.

Re:Not -that- surprising, I guess.

[YE]

It doesn't prove how one is better than the other. I'm not sure a definition of what a "better" console even exists, and I'm fairly sure it doesn't matter, as the console is just a vehicle for expressing the game designers' ideas.

The sales of a widely publicized, all-platform title definitely bear some relation to the market situation.

And that particular title didn't appeal to anyone, not just the "core" Gamecube users :-)

I'm not sure where (and if) this info is published online - it probably isn't, because it costs a lump (and that's the kind of information that DOESN'T want to be free) - but month-by-month, the US dollar share of the market of the Xbox is rising, and that of the Gamecube is diminishing. Overall, the distribution of all sales is very similar to the above cited distribution for Enter the Matrix.

Whatever. I'm not being religious. Buy whatever console you need depending on the games you like (Final Fantasy X for the PS2 is the best game I've ever played). But "Xbox is 3rd place close after Gamecube" is repeated too frequently and is too far from the truth for my liking.

Re:Not -that- surprising, I guess.

[cvas]

Well, that was a mis-type by me. I should have written "proves one console is doing better than the others". I agree that the sales numbers do have some bearing, I guess my point was that if you are trying to refute the "Xbox is 3rd" claim, the sales figures from one game is not enough to accomplish that.

Re:Not -that- surprising, I guess.

[Anonymous Coward]

>They may be leading in sales right now, but I >don't think that'll last forever. Seems like a >bit of an ominous sign that the XBox has barely >been out a year, and yet they've had to cut the >selling price almost in half to stay competitive >already.

How do you expect GC to compete with XBOX and PS2 when GC has a pathetic excuse for online gaming...I mean, Phantasy Star Online, AND THAT'S IT??? Please. I got XBox for online games, and my PS2 only sees use right now as an online machine...is there ANY online sports games on GC yet? Madden? Any NHL game? Baseball? Something similar to SOCOM? How about Wolfenstein, or GHOST RECON? I didn't think so...GC is and will always be for kiddies who don't know why a console would be hooked up to a cable modem/DSL line...

Re:Not -that- surprising, I guess.

[cfuse]

Speak for yourself...I'm guessing you don't actually own a console. I won't go into a huge listing, but there are many, many quality console games out there that beat the hell out of any PC games.

Speaking as a 28 year old, uncoordinated and easily bored occasional game player, I find the problems with consoles:

1. The controllers are too small for my fat hands
2. The controllers have too many buttons in too many places for my fat hands to operate
3. There's no keyboard, how am I supposed to use this thing?
4. Where's the ethernet port? How am I supposed to have a network deathmatch?
5. Every second game involves a cute animal with encephalitis (yuck)
6. All the blood is green
7. I can be soundly thrashed by a 5 year old on any game
8. The 5 year old laughs at me

Re:Not -that- surprising, I guess.

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

This piece of shit. Only because the 3DO didn't suck per se, it just was marketed poorly. the 3DO had some wonderful games and it was a nice bit of hardware. This thing is fucked from the start.

Re:Not -that- surprising, I guess.

[PhoenixFlare]

Seems like you're just joking around on most of these, but what the heck, I have nothing better to do at 1 AM.

The controllers are too small for my fat hands

There are several third-party companies making controllers for all three systems, that usually end up being a bit bigger than the original. Or you could try an original X-Box controller...You need mammoth hands just to hold the thing.

The controllers have too many buttons in too many places for my fat hands to operate

Get more exercise, fatass :):P

There's no keyboard, how am I supposed to use this thing?

Just mash your fingers on the controller. You'd be suprised how well this works for fighting games sometimes.

Where's the ethernet port? How am I supposed to have a network deathmatch?

See my previous answer. Get off yer lazy ass and go buy the modem thingie that fits in your system. :P

Every second game involves a cute animal with encephalitis (yuck)

Don't know about the encephalitis thing, but yes, playing Smash Bros. Melee lately, I have developed an irrational hatred of small cute animals as well. Death to Pokemon!

All the blood is green

Rose-colored glasses come in handy here. Slap 'em on, and revel in the ignorant bliss as everything looks rosy red!

I can be soundly thrashed by a 5 year old on any game

Maybe you should stick to playing tiddlywinks or picking your nose or something instead.

The 5 year old laughs at me

And so will I, loser :P

Re:Not -that- surprising, I guess.

[PhoenixFlare]

How do you expect GC to compete with XBOX and PS2 when GC has a pathetic excuse for online gaming...I mean, Phantasy Star Online, AND THAT'S IT???

Oh, gee, I forgot, the fondest wish of every game player is to have every game online...NOT. I'm so sick and tired of people holding up online console gaming like it's the Holy Grail or something. If I want multiplayer console, i'll get some friends to come over and play that way. In the same room. What a concept!

Please. I got XBox for online games, and my PS2 only sees use right now as an online machine...is there ANY online sports games on GC yet? Madden? Any NHL game? Baseball? Something similar to SOCOM? How about Wolfenstein, or GHOST RECON? I didn't think so...GC is and will always be for kiddies who don't know why a console would be hooked up to a cable modem/DSL line...

I defer to Tycho and Gabe on this one. Oh, and a little newsflash for you- not everyone in the world loves sports games to the exclusion of everything else, and everybody sure as hell doesn't love online sports games.

Come back when you've grown up a bit, and can debate intelligently.

Not in my home

[r84x]

Personally, I really don't care how cool this system could be, I don't want what is basically an extension of some corporate incredibly proprietary system in my home. A corporation should not have power over things in my home to that extent.

This is just the next step from the Xbox, and I cannot imagine having NO control over something in my own home. The Xbox is bad enough, so I say no thanks to the phantom.

Re:Not in my home

[NanoGator]

"Personally, I really don't care how cool this system could be, I don't want what is basically an extension of some corporate incredibly proprietary system in my home. A corporation should not have power over things in my home to that extent. "

A.) It's a GAME MACHINE. Lighten up.

B.) How is this different from the GameCube, XBOX, PS 1&2, GameBoy, GameBoy Advance, Dreamcast (sorta), Saturn, Nintendo 64, 32X, Genesis, SNES, NES, Jaguar, Atari 2600/5200/7800, or Master System? I got news for ya, they were all proprietary, they all had protection schemes, and none of them allowed for you to make backups.

Either you're overreacting or you have serious trouble with the Game Industry in general.

Re:Not in my home

[r84x]

How is this different from the GameCube, XBOX, PS 1&2, GameBoy, GameBoy Advance, Dreamcast (sorta), Saturn, Nintendo 64, 32X, Genesis, SNES, NES, Jaguar, Atari 2600/5200/7800, or Master System? I got news for ya, they were all proprietary, they all had protection schemes, and none of them allowed for you to make backups.

If I really wanted to, I could take any of those apart or mod them or whatever (with the exception of the few newest ones) because I OWNED them, there was no Nazi DRM to deal with, and that is what I take issue with.

Re:Not in my home

[sTalking_Goat]

, and I cannot imagine having NO control over something in my own home.

you and me both Brother, which why I don't own a car. I don't know jack about them, can barely drive, and I don't want to own anything that I couldn't fix myself if something, even if very minor, went wrong.

I'll never understand how people can own something, and be blissfully ignorant of what goes on under the shiny plastic cover. That would disturb me to the very core.

But I guess that why people think I'm obb/com...

Re:Not in my home

[aborchers]

If I really wanted to, I could take any of those apart or mod them or whatever (with the exception of the few newest ones) because I OWNED them, there was no Nazi DRM to deal with, and that is what I take issue with.

There was DRM in the old consoles, too. They just didn't call it that at the time.

Sounds to me like your problem is with the law (DMCA) that prevents you modifying what you buy, not with the architecture of this device...

Re:Not in my home

[ksheka]

The difference is I can still play my Atari 2600 games 20 years after I buy them, without paying a dime to anyone except the electric company to power my system (few cents an hour?).

Who on earth thinks that I'll be able to play games on this machine a couple decades after the company goes belly up?

Re:Not in my home

[sporty]

Encryption is just a way of making things easily unreasable. Translating something from engilsh to french would be a weak form of encryption if done to me, since I only know english. Well, almost.

DES, AES etc.. they are mathematically hard to do since it requires math to break it.. where as french would require a dictionary. Even if I had the keys, doing it w/o a computer is a pain in the ass.

So unless you can read and understand machine code to a full, if not small degree, code written for games are encrypted by the fact that you can't unerstand it.

Do you hate your telephone 'cause you may not understand the actual signals over your phone? Do you hate your computer since you cant' easily look at the firmware and understand it?

I'm all for open softare and hardware et al.. but sometimes, you gotta let it go and live with some things you have, such as machine code, or encryption, which in 1.. 5.. 20 years, will be easily breakable. Wlll you then, be ok with DRM of 2003?

Re:Not in my home

[buysse]

Correct. Also, my Xbox, PS2, GameCube, SNES, NES, and various other systems don't report back on me with marketing information. (No Xbox Live for me, thanks.) Of course, I don't expect any of the devices later than the SNES/Genesis to work in 20 years either -- they have moving parts (drives).

The question is not whether you're paranoid. It's whether you're paranoid enough.

Re:Not in my home

[The Night Watchman]

B.) How is this different from the GameCube, XBOX, PS 1&2, GameBoy, GameBoy Advance, Dreamcast (sorta), Saturn, Nintendo 64, 32X, Genesis, SNES, NES, Jaguar, Atari 2600/5200/7800, or Master System? I got news for ya, they were all proprietary, they all had protection schemes, and none of them allowed for you to make backups.

An impressive list, to be sure. I believe the only missing entry is the TurboGrafx 16, the 8-bit machine with 16-bit graphics, giving us such classics as Bonk, and... um... yeah.

Re:Not in my home

[schussat]

B.) How is this different from the GameCube, XBOX, PS 1&2, GameBoy, GameBoy Advance, Dreamcast (sorta), Saturn, Nintendo 64, 32X, Genesis, SNES, NES, Jaguar, Atari 2600/5200/7800, or Master System? I got news for ya, they were all proprietary, they all had protection schemes, and none of them allowed for you to make backups.

Sure it's still different. If the Phantom's DRM requires you to make a broadband connection to activate anything on its hard drive (a point about which I'm actually uncertain), then I can't take it to a friend's house for the weekend. I certainly can't trade games with a buddy, either. It's a hassle to move it from the living room to the study, and I'm dependent on the long-term survival of a potentially unstable infrastructure to make the thing work. Why do that? It's not about "corporate power," so much as it is about usability, I think.

-schussat

Re:Not in my home

[starling]

I cannot imagine having NO control over something in my own home

A take it you've never "owned" a cat then?

Re:Not in my home

[stratjakt]

and umm Dracula X: Rondo of Blood (*THE* best Castlevania game in the series). And a ton of great arcade ports from SNK and others in japan.

BTW, the TG16 had two 8 bit CPUs, and a 16 bit VPU and cycle for cycle could push more data around than the Genesis or SNES.

It failed stateside due to terrible marketing - they distributed them through radio shack, for crissakes. Bad sales led to a lack of american ports, though the machine completely dominated in Japan.

The bit-bashing that went on, and still goes on, is lame as hell. The intellivision had a 16 bit CPU - so by that simple logic it's on par with the neo geo or jaguar (which had a 16 bit main CPU that controlled the Tom and Jerry VPU/CPU's).

BTW, TG-CD/TurboDuo had no protection scheme so it didnt belong in the list. There was no such thing as a consumer level CD-recorder in those days.

Re:Not in my home

[stratjakt]

Sure it's still different. If the Phantom's DRM requires you to make a broadband connection to activate anything on its hard drive

I'll bet you dollars to donuts right now that this isnt the case, or at best a half truth.

They are, after all, trying to make money right? You probably connect to activate it once, and its probably optional. I dont know, I havent seen the thing.

My only point is you should know better than to take anything you read on any OSDN site as truth. Never trust "reporters" with agendas.

Re:Not in my home

[DeHans]

for all the consoles you stated I bought games, I could lend them to my friends, they could lend them to me. Not so with Phantom. Big fucking difference.

Re:Not in my home

[schussat]

I'll bet you dollars to donuts right now that this isnt the case, or at best a half truth.

Hey now, "half truth" implies that I'm trying to get one over on you, when in fact I said precisely that was a detail about which I was unsure. Regardless of whether you need broadband just to boot the thing, the Phantom is still a significant departure from consoles that use removable media. It's not about DRM and OSDN's "agenda," but about usability.

-schussat

Re:Not in my home

[Anonymous Coward]

>> Do you hate your computer since you cant' easily look at the firmware and understand it?

Well, um, yeah, a bit. Back in the days of the 286's, you could get a "Technical Reference Manual" from IBM or Compaq that had complete circuit diagrams for the motherboard and add-on cards. The IBM manual had an assembly listing of the machine's BIOS, and the Compaq manual had a function-by-function listing describing each BIOS call. That and a copy of Turbo Pascal, and you could do some really kickass programming. I'm not sure where to even look for a listing of all the current BIOS functions...

Re:Not in my home

[Valdrax]

Actually, he also missed the VirtualBoy, WonderSwan (and WS Color), Lynx, Intellevision, Vectrex, Mega CD, Nomad, and of course the NeoGeo, NeoGeo Pocket, and later NeoGeoCD games (earlier games, like those of the 3D0, work just fine from CD-R).

(Besides, the TurboGraphix 16 versions of the Ys series of adventure RPGs was flat out the best.)

Oh no....

[StaceyRey]

that it has no way to get data on or off of it except through a dedicated connection to Infinium Labs' own servers...

So when I get that nice "We had a problem, send email to Microsoft to report the error" dialog there's a good chance they won't receive it? How will they ever know what happened? ;-)

Re:Oh no....

[damiam]

Isn't it a little weird for an essential component of this device (the OS) to be made by their primary competitor? That sounds like a moronic business decision to me.

Re:Oh no....

[Kaa]

Isn't it a little weird for an essential component of this device (the OS) to be made by their primary competitor? That sounds like a moronic business decision to me.

Microsoft is no more a competitor to them than it it is a competitor to Dell.

For the last time, this box IS NOT A CONSOLE. It is just a PC, a locked-down PC running Windows.

There are going to be no games developed specifically for it and only for it. ANY WINDOWS GAME WILL RUN ON IT.

Sigh...

Re:Oh no....

[hesiod]

> Isn't it a little weird for an essential component of this device (the OS) to be made by their primary competitor?

Maybe it's MS quietly funding this. They can sell the copies of the OS it runs to themselves pretty cheap, use similar ideas as the XBox that they've already developed, and then sell it for twice as much due to "limited production run." I do't really believe this, just a slim possibility

Re:Oh no....

[gl4ss]

that's just the thing.

the people who would be likely to buy this, already have a pc.

do they want a locked down pc too? and would you think a person without a pc would be willing to go through the mess that kinda system is going to be?

and microsoft IS competitor to them. what they want to sell is an easy way to play games at your home, exactly what consoles are for. they're trying to sell a GAME PLAYING MACHINE.

personally i just feel they first asked for money for something that was impossible to make and once they had the money had to come up with something.

Re:Oh no....

[stratjakt]

I see the market. People who want to play PC games on their TV without all the hassles of setup applications, driver conflicts, ceaselessly benchmarking to make sure they're getting the right FPS/image quality ratio, etc etc..

A consolized PC could do very well.

Re:Oh no....

[Anonymous Coward]

They better have some rock solid drivers on their system. Can we be sure every single game, ever, will run acceptably on it, and the drivers will work? Eventually people will want to buy a new Phantom or upgrade it somehow, because later games will have system requirements too high.

If you want to play PC games, you have to install them. Setup applications..
Unless the Phantom has its own games, which don't need to be installed (or just automatically install by themselves).

Wow

[Lord_Slepnir]

All of that security....DRM....encryption....requiring a connection to Infinium Labs' own computers....

I give it 3 weeks before it's completly cracked and reverse engineered. Thanks, Infinium Labs', for giving me (and dozens of other nerds) something to do this semester!

Re:Wow

[tarius8105]

I give it a week after that when a Linux or NetBSD port is made to it.

Re:Wow

[kwerle]

OK, rated funny -- but it's mostly sad.

How are folks doing at hacking XBox? Only now can you (in theory) run arbitrary code on an XBox without doing hardware mods. How long has it taken?

Re:Wow

[Dr Reducto]

Actually, dontcha maybe think that this is maybe a little experiment being performed by Microsoft?

I mean, look at the details:
1. DRM out the wazoo.
2. It runs Windows XP
3. The guy who runs the website is obviously not going to be able to bring a console to the market. MS already lost billions on Xbox just to enter the market. And MS already controls developers!
4. It is totally shady.

Maybe M$ wanted to test the waters for a home entertainment box that ran Windows XP, proprietary software, and intensely strong DRM, without consumer or justice department backlash. If you think about it, if you were an off the shelf nerd building a gaming platform, why would you choose Windows XP? The $100 price tag? The bugginess? Or would you want to use XP because you wanted to make a box that is the epitome of TCPA technology? I think the Phantom may become the Xbox 2.

copyright bad?

[Exiler]

So I guess you'd rather have works never enter the public domain, right?

That's exactly what copyright was established to ensure.

Re:copyright bad?

[Anonymous Coward]

That is so wrong I almost don't know where to start.

Copyright was meant to protect content creators' rights, not to ensure that entered the public domain. The fact that mechanisms for copyright expiry were introduced to accomplish that secondary goal was a product of the foresight of the people involved and their ability to weigh the public good of eventual expiry of copyright protection. Unfortunately their foresight didn't extend to specifically limiting the terms in a way which specifically forebade further extensions by corrupt congressmen in the pockets of the media lobby.

Re:copyright bad?

[RazzleFrog]

I think what he means is that if copyright didn't exist people would be much more careful about how and where they publish something they created. If I wrote a book and there was no such thing as copyright I might only print one copy and lend it to friends only so that somebody else doesn't take it and claim it as their own. That would mean the rest of the world would miss out on what might be a great work.

The fact that copyrights expire is not an afterthought as you make it seem. Here is the applicable quote from the Constitution:

"The Congress shall have the power. . . To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries. . .[emphasis mine]"

It is quite clear that the Founding Fathers fully intended copyrights to expire.

Re:copyright bad?

[fossa]

Depends where you live I suppose. In the US, the Consitution grants Congress the right to grant exclusive monopolies to authors to "promote the progress of science and the arts" for the good of the public. This is commonly interpreted to mean "more stuff in the public domain is better". Copyright exists as an incentive to, say, author a work. If I could not make a living by authoring works, then I probably wouldn't; therefore the work would never get to the public because it wouldn't ever exist. So the public agrees to grant *limited* monopoly in the hope that the author will be able to make a living writing books (and so will write books). The deal is fulfilled when the public receives the work fully (when it returns to the public domain).

There is no "creators' rights"; that's hooey invented by copyright cartels who want to convince you that it is wrong to make derivative works. Originality is God. But know this: nothing is truly original. Everyone learned from someone else, it is how humans grow. Every "orginal work" is based on a lifetime of experiences.

Re:copyright bad?

[Scaba]

I think he means the current implementation of copyright law sucks, which is no longer about providing incentive for real individuals to create*, but to provide a perpetual profit machine to fictitious entities (corporations), as well as a large club with which to beat down anyone who might suggest creative works enter the public domain. Mickey Mouse should have been in the public domain a long time now, but is not. The Beatles song catalog should be in the public domain, but is not. In fact, according to the original copyright laws, anything created before 1975 should be public domain (hey, that includes me!). So, no matter what the good intentions of copyright law were, like patent law, copyright truly sucks today. Just another good idea gone to shit because of greed.

* US Constitution, Article I, Section 8, Clause 8: To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries. The end run around this, of course, is to extend the definition of limited time whenever Sen. Fritz Hollings gets a nervous call from Mickey.

Re:copyright bad?

[NeoNormal]

> "So I guess you'd rather have works never enter the public domain, right?"

Er, so that would be a change from what? Not the current situation.

Im glad they incoprtated the "????" step.

[bethane]

Roberts told me it will probably take somewhere between 750,000 and one million subscribers to start turning a profit, based on $9.95 per month. This doesn't look good to me. Seems they feel that they'll have to have something like $88,000,000 to $100,000,000 per year to break even? That's JUST TO BREAK EVEN!?! This certainly smells like a bad ".com" bussiness plan to me. Is it buying all the licences for the games? Someone help me understand why he has to have that sort of cash flow, just to break even. After all, you can build rather large networks and even support them for a heck of a lot less than that. His console is pretty much a PC, not exactly huge costs there. Besides, the purchaser is paying his share. So, is the lion share going to pay for content? If he has to have that sort of cash flow to pay for content, that surely sounds like he isn't brokering very good deals to support his business model.

Re:Im glad they incoprtated the "????" step.

[Blob Pet]

Well someone's gotta pay for that snazzy flash intro .

Re:Im glad they incoprtated the "????" step.

[FatRatBastard]

Only a fraction of the the $100M - $120M a year would go into their pocket. Part of it is going to be taken by the ISPs, part to cover the content (game) providers, and of course there's bandwith / data warehouseing / employees / that high-end office space to pay for.

Granted, assume they split the monthly fee 50/50 with ISPs $50-$60M still seems an awful lot to break even with.

Re:Im glad they incoprtated the "????" step.

[duffhuff]

His console is pretty much a PC, not exactly huge costs there.

Initially, yes. Now, try and tell that to Microsoft. Last I heard they were getting gouged by NVIDIA and Intel because the parts they use in the X-Box are now out of date. A 733 Mhz Celeron (esque) chip? Not a huge amount of demand for those. NV2A? Still pretty good, but definately far from the top, and the source of a small falling-out, if I recall (NVIDIA was charging Microsoft rediculous amounts of money for the chip). 8 GB hard drive? I haven't seen one of those for sale for a long time, but I believe they now use larger drives with smaller partitions.

Re:Im glad they incoprtated the "????" step.

[Anonymous Coward]

try and tell that to Microsoft. Last I heard they were getting gouged by NVIDIA and Intel

So there is some justice in this world! Seriously though, if they were using a standard PC (off the shelf mobo), then this would be a non-issue, just buy the cheapest proc and GPU that does the job for the production run you're doing. MS went and custom designed a mobo but based it on parts they should have known weren't going to be around for years on end. Now, I don't know what the inside of one of these Phantom boxes looks like but judging by the size of the picture, it looks like a standard micro-ATX (or mini) board would easily fit in there. All they would really need to do to "DRM enable" it would be to use a VPN system and an encrypted partition, no special hardware (or extra unit cost) required. Eventually, someone will tear one of these open and we'll all find out what's going on in there. Also, I'm pretty sure that this isn't a console in that it will run console only games. The way I read it, this will run standard PC games but using DRM (rather than boxed copies) as the distribution mechanism. My question is, what happends when your Phantom unit-HD is full?

Re:Im glad they incoprtated the "????" step.

[heli0]

"Someone help me understand why he has to have that sort of cash flow($100,000,000), just to break even."

Cocaine?

Re:Im glad they incoprtated the "????" step.

[dnoyeb]

Advertising. Lawyers. Executive Bonuses.

Re:Im glad they incoprtated the "????" step.

[DrRobert]

A $100 million dollar company is very small. I work for a very small $400 million/yr company. Reasonable advertising will cost a $20-$40 million/yr.

Re:Im glad they incoprtated the "????" step.

[sexecutioner]

"Snazzy"? more like shithouse!

It wasn't just the intro that was in flash, it was the whole damn site, and it was unusable on this little old iBook.

I can undersand why people would want to use flash like this, it certainly is a much more extensive medium than HTML at the moment. But do we want it?

Re:fp!

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine a beowulf cluster of Phantom consoles combined with the power of some XBoxes?

NewsForge Question

[syr]

Just a simple question, really. Why do we care that NewsForge and Slashdot are both run by OSDN? The editors are appending this statement to the submission like they feel ethically required to make the comment.

Usually you see comments like this on CNN.com or in Time Magazine. Where you see them bashing or praising a part of AOL Time Warner and they have an ethical obligation to report that Time/CNN is owned by AOL TW.

GameTab - game news & reviews. compiled.

Re:NewsForge Question

[RocketScientist]

It's supposed to be standard practice (full disclosure) that whenever an editor publishes a report that references in any way their parent company or any other company that the publication has a financial or other interest in that the interest be included in a statement in the report.

Look at any given report on Microsoft on MSNBC, or, as you pointed out, any given report on CNN that references AOL, Time Warner, or perhaps even HBO.

It's just good ethical journalism. It helps to avoid the appearence of partiality.

Re:NewsForge Question

[CashCarSTAR]

I agree.

I don't give two cares that you guys are linking to another part of your own network. You do not need to tell me that.

In fact, it doesn't matter one bit. Give preference to all the OSDN sites, I don't care. If you ignore good stuff on the other sites, Slashdot dies. I don't think that will happen.

Sorry. It just irritated me too.

Re:NewsForge Question

[bloggins02]

For the same reason a package of peanuts proclaims:

"Warning: contains nuts"

Re:NewsForge Question

[rjoseph]

By law, they are required to disclose that there may be a bias in their actions because of the fact that both NF and /. are run by OSDN. That's why, nothing more.

And no, it doesn't have anything to do with peanuts ;)

Re:NewsForge Question

[wo1verin3]

>>For the same reason a package of peanuts proclaims:
>>"Warning: contains nuts"

I'm more worried when they're marked:

Warning: MAY contain nuts

How long...

[tsetem]

until someone suggests:

Making a Beowulf cluster of these

Hacking them until they become Linux terminals

That MS will buy them up/out or do the same thing

Re:How long...

[Anonymous Coward]

until someone suggests:

• Making a Beowulf cluster of these - Check
• Hacking them until they become Linux terminals - Check
• That MS will buy them up/out or do the same thing - Check

Re:How long...

[Nynaeve]

I wondered how long it would be until someone wondered how long it would be until someone suggested a beowolf cluster, etc.
11:56a - 12:02p = six minutes

Re:How long...

[MyHair]

Okay, then how about an OpenMosix cluster of these with clusterKNOPPIX? Maybe we can PXE boot them....

(In answer to your question, about 15 minutes.)

Can't see much use for this

[Art_Vandelai]

At least not for the home user - how much would it cost to set up a "dedicated connection"?

Maybe in high-end gaming establishments - arcades, etc. But then, why use a PC-like platform?

I could see this working something line the NTN game consoles that are in bars, where everyone across multiple locations can compete all at once. Still, setting up completely dedicated connections without using public networks makes this a huge undertaking and probably not worth the cost.

And if it did use public networks - well who would want this, why not just buy a PC?

Re:Can't see much use for this

[malfunct]

I thought that a lot of the new arcade platforms were going to more commodity hardware inside. I know that there were arcade machines slated to come out on an upgraded PS2 and upgraded XBOX platform.

I think the idea is develope for hardware that is easy to come by and well understood by your developers. Buy yourself some advantage from network effect and markets of scale.

Re:Can't see much use for this

[DeathPenguin]

Indeed. I can't see the 'average' user wanting to run RJ11 or RJ45 cables to the machine, sharing a slow connection or phone line (dial-up users), setting up routers or paying for an extra IP address, etc.

Rather than thinking that this console is going to compete with X-Box, PS2, or GC, due to the fact that it requires network access it should be competition for on-line services since it'll likely attract mostly only people who already have their TVs / consoles set up for network access.

Networking a machine can be a pretty big undertaking. I know lots of people who have their TVs (And consoles, consequently) and their computers set up in different rooms. For them, using a console like this would not be as easy as plugging the console into a switch. Running a cable can be a huge obstacle, and I don't know many people eager to drill holes in their walls / floors nor are they fond of having cables taped to the flooring around a room.

As I gaze into my crystal ball....

[DrJonesAC2]

I see another X-Box in your future.

so don't buy it.

[sulli]

I won't. Sounds like crap to me.

whoa

[TrekkieGod]

Last time I checked, when you buy something it's yours.

When was the last time you checked? Been away for a while?

how unfair :)

[Anonymous Coward]

It's funny how much trouble Microsoft are willing to go through just to stop people from playing with it.

Why Windows?

[MBCook]

Why are they running Windows? In all seriousness, why not Linux or something else? If they run Windows, then the must pay MS money for every console they make. So even if the console becomes a success (I doubt it, based on the number of vaporware consoles over the past few years, and the fact that we have 3 big players, which I think is market saturation) they'll be paying some of their gross income to MS. Does this make sense to anyone? Because it sure doesn't make much sense to me.

The only real plus I can see would be DirectX. That said, Linux has OpenGL, OpenAL, SDL, Allego, SVGAlib, and anything else you want. I would expect the company would make a DevKit anyway that had their OWN video/audio/network APIs. So I ask again, why Windows?

Re:Why Windows?

[Kaa]

Why are they running Windows? In all seriousness, why not Linux or something else?

The point of this box is to play games.

How many games are available for Windows? How many games are available for Linux?

Geez...

Re:Why Windows?

[techstar25]

It's so they can inflate the "number of software titles", when they launch. There are millions of shareware tetris/pacman/solitaire clones that will already play on their Windows machine. So technically, at launch it will have more software titles than ANY OTHER console. Linux would have Tux racer and ...well anyway I agree, linux would be a better idea.

If for no other reason, just imagine that MS could pull the plug on the licenses at any moment if they think it's cutting into Xbox sales, which it likely will, though not by much.

Re:Why Windows?

[Zathrus]

The only real plus I can see would be DirectX. That said, Linux has OpenGL, OpenAL, SDL, Allego, SVGAlib, and anything else you want.

Anything else, except DirectX that is.

Now that we've gotten that out of the way, count how many modern games are written for OpenGL, OpenAL, SDL, Allego, or SVGAlib. Now count how many are written for DirectX.

Now if you want people to port to your platform, which is the safer bet?

Sure, you can (and probably will) release your own SDK, but you still have to deal with reality. Game makers have 4 primary platforms right now - PCs, PS2, Xbox, and Gamecube. Xbox gets to leverage PC development since they're not too far off from one another -- you need to change things certainly, but the core engine can remain the same. Mostly. If you're creating a new platform then you may as well either leverage off one of the established platforms, or have one helluva lot of capital behind you to create a new one and lure developers over. Since you'll be going up against Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo, I really hope you have a lot of capital.

Since two of the four platforms are completely and utterly closed - Nintendo and PS2 - you only have one option to leverage. DirectX. Done right you can actually do better leveraging than the Xbox... although it's not sounding like they're doing this.

Oh, and before you flame me as a Windows bigot, I'm not. Yeah, I use it. I also use Redhat and code for Unix. I prefer Unix. But that doesn't mean I put blinders on and whine about how the world should work instead of understanding how it actually does.

Re:Why Windows?

[truthsearch]

My guess is the goal is not to run most current games. If it was to run current games no one would sign up for the $10/month excess fee for updates and network play. They'd mostly stick with their PCs and new customers would see no advantage over a regular PC. So if you're making a new console with new games, there's nothing but a disadvantage in choosing Windows. Well I suppose they see some advantage, but I sure don't.

Re:Why Windows?

[Painaxl]

Well, if you're trying to incorporate this "Uber-gaming" philosophy like they are, you're probably going to want the OS that most PC titles are geared for. Since we haven't heard a peep about any software being "Phantom-Exclusive", I've got to assume that most of the content is going to be ported from current PC titles.

Why try and make an already daunting task (porting the hundreds of games that they claim they'll have to their own network specs) harder by having to switch OS's as well?

Re:Why Windows?

[stratjakt]

Umm, because it's designed to play games. Not some new format games, but PC games.

What a stupid question. Library of thousands of titles or Tux Racer?

Seriously. What a stupid question. You must have a head like a ping pong ball.

Re:Why Windows?

[frovingslosh]

they'll be paying some of their gross income to MS. Does this make sense to anyone?

It not only makes no sense, but it costs them dearly (several years ago I was involved with a OEM product that needed a DOS. Microsoft was contacted and wanted $100 a copy for DOS, more that the upgrade cost of MSDOS on the market at the time. They would not flex at all. We went with DR-DOS for much less.)

In addition to M$ raping them on the OS cost, they completely give up access to source code for their own box! And they open themselves for anything that M$ might do to them. I expect they are too small of fish for M$ to bother with them (although they would seem to have to have negoiated a version of XP that does not need product activation, unless they activate each new machine to themselves at assembly), but if they ever got large enough to survive you can expect something to turn up in XP that would wreek havoc with the console. And this would even be much more deniable for M$ than all the other times they've done it to competitors from DR-DOS to IBM and beyond, with no penality for such actions so far.

This company will not be around long, don't buy a box from them that depends on their continued existance to use. And that is just another reason the company will not be around long.

Re:Why Windows?

[Slack3r78]

In all honesty, with a properly designed engine that keeps these issues in mind from the start of development, it's not that hard to be able to leverage whatever the hell you want. You have to write wrappers around your core code, which does take time, but it's completely possible. Hell, the Win32 implementation of SDL is mainly just a wrapper around DirectX. Graphics engines can often be ported between APIs with a simple DLL swap.

While I've never developed for GameCube or PS2, the fact that ports for/to the Xbox and the other two consoles happen fairly regularly with minimal delay between releases (PS2/XBox releases are often silmultaneous) is further indication that as long as your engine is well built, it can be ported with minimal headache.

DirectX is NOT the only option if you want leverage. It's the option that Microsoft has pushed however, and for that reason, it's become the "standard" of the gaming industry. In my opinion, it comes more down to software design and developer preference - and MS has successfully convinced enough developers that DX is "the" in thing, so that's what most people these days are learning. I don't think it has anything to do with either set of APIs being any more advanced or portable than the other.

Heat Problems

[TonyZahn]

Well, it's definately got the most unique case design I've ever seen in a game console, but I'm a little concerned about how that sheet is going to affect its heat dissapation characteristics. Unless that's some sort of highly-conductive metallic mesh, in which case it might be an oversized flexible heatsink...

Either way, I think the floating sheet look fits pretty well with the "phantom" name, ask any little kid and they'll tell you that ghosts wear sheets over their heads.

Wonderful news!

[jamonterrell]

Now we're getting a cheap gaming system to go along with our cheap linuxbox .

Phantom price? TV?

[Schnapple]

running Windows XP

. So that's like $200 right there...

and the only thing that differentiates this 'game console' from a standard, Windows-running PC

Well that and the fact that it hooks up to a TV, right?

Another hobbled PC console...

[grimani]

What's the point?

If development for it is exactly the same as the PC, why develop games for this console?

PCs number in the hundreds of millions. Nobody in their right minds would develop a game exclusively for it - maybe a port after a PC release, but this will never be a primary platform.

The XBox is similar, although noteably different in one respect - Microsoft is a huge games publisher and owns quite a few development houses as well.

I predict a quick, merciless death due to the following reasons:

1) Lack of good, exclusive content results in lackluster hardware sales, which results in lack of good content...

2) There is another company trying the same approach. That company controls DirectX. Does anyone really think Microsoft will sit still while some upstart to beats down the XBox? Expect Microsoft to hit back. Their weapon of choice would be DirectX.

3) Lack of differentiation from PC, if most games are available on PC as well. XBox suffers in this regard also, although Microsoft has done an admirable job of making content exclusive. It remains to be seen how long they are willing to throw away money to support XBox; we all know that Halo would have made much more money had the PC version been released by now also.

Re:Another hobbled PC console...

[rjoseph]

maybe a port after a PC release

I'm pretty sure that's exactly what they're betting on. The article says that Infinium Labs is investing a bunch of time and effort into helping other companies with the effort to port their already existing games to the console.

But in the case of a PC release, there is nothing to be ported. The Phantom is just a fancy WinXP machine with some yet-to-be-cracked (and it will) encryption scheme. If it plays in XP (which is the target for nearly all PC game development these days) then it plays on the Phantom. So while I'm still a skeptic, they do have a pretty good idea here.

Re:Another hobbled PC console...

[Kaa]

What's the point?

If development for it is exactly the same as the PC, why develop games for this console?

You don't understand. This isn't a console. It's just a locked-down PC, period. Any game that runs on Windows will run on it.

They don't want people to develop specifically for it. They just want licenses for standard plain-vanilla PC games.

Re:Another hobbled PC console...

[orb_fan]

I would have to disagree in two regards.

First, presumably they have a patent for this business model, so they can have a revenue source from sony, MS, sega, etc.

Second, for the game producers, this is a great idea. They develop on a PC, then release the game on the phantom, they only need to release on a PC ONLY IF the phantom version doesn't turn a profit for them.

Imagine an MP3 player that worked the same way - the RIAA would love it! Secure digital distribution (yes I know there is always the DAD recording method).

Re:Another hobbled PC console...

[Painaxl]

I don't know about Halo possibly making more money on the PC...

I mean, think about it. X-Box piracy, while gaining speed, still is waaay behind PC piracy. While it probably wouldn't kill sales, it would keep them around the X-Box figures, for the most part.

I'm Sorry

[Dark Paladin]

But already, there's no way in H-E-double-hockey-sticks I'm going to use this.

First, I'm somebody who likes to play the games. No problem there. I even like to play the PC games (FPS belongs on the PC - why I'm waiting for Halo OS X before playing it).

But I also have a job, two kids, a wife who likes the wild monkey sex at times - and every so often, I have to travel.

So for me, I might take my PS2/Gamecube/GBA on the road (I'd take the Xbox, but it would bring my luggage over the weight limit....), or plug a game into the laptop (my Powerbook plays Max Payne and such pretty surprisingly well).

But I can't imagine paying for a mothly service for a game I don't own, can't touch for myself, maybe sell later like I would a book or a CD. (Agh - RIAA lawyers - run!) I'm odd that way - I need that sense of ownership, that I can go to my little library and just pull it out whenever I want and play, not wait for the downloads/reinstalls (since it may be years until I replay an old classic, like Deus Ex or Wasteland or Fallout - you get the drill).

The system must also require a bandwidth connection, and while I'm sure they won't download the entire game to the hard drive (which, seeing as more games (aka [sarcasm]Baldur's Gate III: 20 CD's and counting[/sarcasm]....)), they'll still have to stream it. And I have other things I can be doing with my bandwidth.

I'm not saying it's a horrible idea for everybody - just not for me. For others, I could be wrong.

Re:I'm Sorry

[MikeD83]

But I also have a job, two kids, a wife who likes the wild monkey sex at times - and every so often, I have to travel.

Why does this geek feel the need to differentiate himself? Some of us are looking for girlfriends in general. This guy has to tell us about his sexual escapades... I wonder if he works for SCO.

Re:I'm Sorry

[rampant mac]

"a wife who likes the wild monkey sex at times"

Whoa there fella, this is Slashdot, you might want to simplify that terminology into something a little more geek specific. Suggestions would include:

a wife who likes a hot, throbbing beowulf in the zeitgeist

a wife who likes a little "CowboyNeal" first thing in the morning

according to NetCraft our sex life is dying

I "SCO" her at times and she always comes back for more

Re:I'm Sorry

[Anonymous Coward]

"a wife who likes the wild monkey sex at times"

You and your wife need to get some counseling, fast. No matter how much they satisfy her, monkeys are naturally dirty animals and can carry a lot of diseases. And I'm sure your relationship will eventually suffer as she's screaming out a chimpanzee's name while you sit on the couch in the living room, watching Oprah reruns.

Re:I'm Sorry

[Grishnakh]

But I also have a job, two kids, a wife who likes the wild monkey sex at times - and every so often, I have to travel.

We could really do without this on Slashdot. With so many lonely single guys here, the last thing we need is someone coming around and shoving our noses in it.

BTW, what does she do for wild monkey sex when you're travelling?

Re:I'm Sorry

[Anonymous Coward]

But I also have a job, two kids, a wife who likes the wild monkey sex at times - and every so often, I have to travel.

The times I usually have wild mokey sex with your wife is while your at work or traveling.

Re:I'm Sorry

[brkello]

Everyone is responding to this line...so I apologize for doing this also, but I can't resist.

But I also have a job, two kids, a wife who likes the wild monkey sex at times - and every so often, I have to travel.

I am fine with the whole wife thing...but do you have to involve your work and kids in the monkey sex too?

Called it!

[Astrorunner]

Re:Too many games? (Score:2)
by Astrorunner (316100) on Tuesday January 21, @10:06PM (#5131985)
From the appearance of the case (they have a semi-transparent front-view on their site) it appears that it is a standard pc mother board in the case. I can make out 3 or 4 pci slots on the left side, cpu with heat sink, and apparently the power supply / fan on the right.

The only way, to my mind, they can truly claim to have 32,000 games to start would be that the system is basically a slimmed down windows machine capable of running today (or yesterday's) games.

Obviously, I'm simplifying things greatly -- they have to build the whole distribution method and so forth -- I can imagine them shipping games over broadband as ghost images. They'd only need to do a real install on one machine, take an image, etc etc.

The catch is, it will run today's games and yesterday's games, but it won't run *tomorrow's* games since you're really not going to be able to upgrade it.
"

*gloat gloat gloat*

Re:Called it!

[Anonymous Coward]

The irony is that back in january, you posted what was (in hindsight) one of the most insightful posts in response to a story, and you got

Drumroll....

NADA!!!! Not one person modded you up! Wow. Now you get modded +2 funny (But remember, being a smartass doesn't get you Karma). Sortof a letdown for the great prognosticator.

PashoWWW!

sounds like a fun wknd project

[Anonymous Coward]

Buy one of these

take it apart

review motherboard configuration - find schematics online

install cdrw drive onto motherboard

install harddisc onto motherboard

download drivers (or convince XP to enable them)

save stuff at will

laugh your ass off at those silly drm/ms fuckheads

Nice quote:

[cK-Gunslinger]

As one industry observer pointed out when he first heard the Infinium Labs story, "You buy the console. You buy the games. Then you pay to play the games you bought on the console you bought. It's sort of like buying an arcade game but still having to put quarters in. And ads!"

Reminds me of "Funny Farm" when the telco installed a payphone in Chevy Chase's house.

Yeah, sign me up! ;-)

Re:Nice quote:

[atta1]

Obviously (leaving out the console price) there is no shortage of people who are willing to shell out 50 bucks (or more) for a game and then paying a monthly fee to play it.

Well we like a challenge, don't we...

[sTalking_Goat]

1000 geek points to the first person to get it to boot Linux.

its ludicrous that a company would sell something like this

Even more ludicrous is that a bunch of clueless people will, no doubt, actually go out and buy some.

Re:Well we like a challenge, don't we...

[Rakarra]

1000 geek points to the first person to get it to boot Linux.

its ludicrous that a company would sell something like this

Even more ludicrous is that a bunch of clueless people will, no doubt, actually go out and buy some.

Well how can you put Linux on it unless you buy it first? :)

Uh oh...

[NanoGator]

... they said DRM! Everybody get your pitchforks out! Quick, before somebody interjects some reason into the situation!

Re:Uh oh...

[gearheadsmp]

I think I lost my pitchfork and torch from the last escapade at SCO HQ.

The Best Part of the Story

[Ian Wolf]

Really, the only thing that differentiates this 'game console' from a standard, Windows-running PC is that it has no way to get data on or off of it except through a dedicated connection to Infinium Labs' own servers via your broadband ISP, plus the fact that if you try to open it up or modify it or grab data from the hard drive, bad things will happen, starting with violation of the terms under which you will lease or purchase the Phantom.

The first question is why would I want this when there are PS2's and Xbox's to be had for less money. Especially when you consider that this is going to retail for around $400 plus a $9.95 per month subscription fee and some games will have a seperate charge not included in the subscription (so I gathered, I wasn't certain if the 9.95 subscription was for a service or a lease). All told the cost of this device is going to be steep.

Now on to my next biggest concern. Downloading games over the internet is all well and good for some games, but you're still going to have to wait a long time for it to download. This becomes even more evident to those users who have substandard broadband providers like I do.

Don't get me wrong, I think software delivery over the web is the wave of the future. In fact, I download a large number of the software I use (legally), but some titles are just too damn big.

Re:The Best Part of the Story

[FreshFunk510]

I haven't RTFA but I'd like to throw in a little speculation.

Why would anyone want to buy this? Well why would anyone buy an Xbox or a PS2 when they have a Nintendo? That's a silly question. Simply put: 1) it might have better hardware, 2) it might have better games, 3) it might offer games that other consoles don't..etc etc etc. There are a million and 1 reasons why people would purchase this console and they are the same reasons why people purchased consoles in the past.

I agree that "logically" downloading games purely over the internet is probably not the wisest solution for your standard graphics-intensive game. Somehow, though, I don't think they're that stupid assuming that people will wait 1 whole day to download a new game. I'm goign to give them the benefit of the doubt.

Re:The Best Part of the Story

[iamhassi]

At first glance I'd agree, but I think downloading games is still a good idea, even if it's *gasp* dial-up, depending on how they set it up.

On broadband you could easily download a 1 CD game in a few hours (how many console games are on more than 1 CD?). If it was a PC game I'd get bored in 20 minutes and be upset it took so long to download, but console games you usually play for months, so waiting a few hours for something I'll use for months isn't so bad.

On dial-up they *might* be able to split some games into levels, textures and sounds not needed until later levels (don't get the rocket launcher till level 3? Why spend 10 minutes downloading the textures and sounds until then?). You could download the first level, get playing, and while playing the other levels could download. If you don't play a few days then the rest of the game could finish completely.

Yet another hacking challenge

[serutan]

Once again, the DRM world prepares to provide the smart-people-with-spare-time world with more amusement. Woo-Hoo!!

Been there, did that...

[Craig Maloney]

I believe the original version of this was called "XBox". I think I'll have about as much chance of seeing these in the wild as I did of seeing an Indrema (the major difference is I would have loved to see an Indrema in the wild).

Re:Been there, did that...

[MyHair]

This strikes me as being more like DivX. Not the video codec, but the pay-to-watch DVD system Circuit City tried to push when DVD video was just making it to stores.

To refresh those who don't know/remember: It was a lot like DSS pay-per-view. The DivX player connected to a phone line, and you would buy a movie disc and be authorized to view it for a certain period of time. Afterward you could buy more time or throw the disc away.

Thankfully it flopped big-time. Mainly because you could buy a DVD and own your own damn videos. I see a similar problem with Phantom versus the existing consoles.

Yeah, it's like XBox too, but it has the pay-to-play feel of DivX.

VIRTUAL ARCADE!

[LiberalApplication]

I've said it before, and I'll say it again:

It would be fantastic if they could strike up a deal with the proper-owners of arcade boards and titles to set up a system where the Phantom runs a modified version of MAME, and Inifinium Labs' networks provide on-request ROMs to subscribers. Every time you hit "insert quarter", you get charged a nickel. Two cents go to the holder of the copyright, two to Infinium Labs, and one cent to PETA (I just threw that last one in for fun).

It'd be like having an infinitely large arcade in your home, and you wouldn't be doing it illegally. The people who wrote the software will be reimbursed, possibly even twenty five years after they stopped producing that game.

Also, imagine if they implemented something along the lines of Kaillera. You could team up with your kid brother from a thousand miles away to play NARC together, just like you did in high school, at the corner arcade.

Re:VIRTUAL ARCADE!

[Anonymous Coward]

Every time you hit "insert quarter", you get charged a nickel. Two cents go to the holder of the copyright, two to Infinium Labs, and one cent to PETA (I just threw that last one in for fun).

What does People Eating Tasty Animals have to do with video games?

Re:VIRTUAL ARCADE!

[i8urtaco]

No, no. That won't work because it's actually a good idea. I bet it would be a bitch to round up the licenses, though.

Re:VIRTUAL ARCADE!

[heli0]

Why not just build your own stand-alone mame machine that charges you $0 each time you play?

Re:VIRTUAL ARCADE!

[Tokerat]

Why not just build your own stand-alone mame machine that charges you $0 each time you play?

Sure, and while we're at it, let's download MP3s instead of paying for them. ;-)

I think perhaps a subscription-based service would be nicer, or better yet the choice: the people who don't play as often won't be charged as much, and the fiends who would play every game every day (....myself O:-) can pay a nice flat rate.

No CD?

[lightspawn]

So... let me get this straight.

If I buy this console, and a friend buys it too, we can't trade games?

Do I even "own" the games I pay for?

What happens when the console breaks down and I want to replace it? Did all my games vanish with it? Phantom, indeed!

Considering the amount of games available for my non-phantom computers, why would I ever want to bother with it? I wanted to be able to root for the underdog here, but there's just no way.

Re:No CD?

[FreshFunk510]

Of course you can't trade games that you buy. It's called licensing. It applies to all games/software out there. It's not surprising.

Secondly, I'm sure that if your console "breaks down" your registration will allow you to get a second copy. This is only common sense.

Lastly, you ask, "Considering the amount of games available for my non-phatoms computers, why would I ever want to bother with it?" Have you ever owned a Nintendo? Xbox? Gamecube? Playtstation I/II? The same can be said for all these consoles yet they existed with varying levels of popularity. This question has been answered before.

Re:No CD?

[Kaa]

If I buy this console, and a friend buys it too, we can't trade games?

No, you can't trade games.

Do I even "own" the games I pay for?

No, but I can make a good argument you don't own the games you buy shrink-wrapped in a store either...

What happens when the console breaks down and I want to replace it? Did all my games vanish with it? Phantom, indeed!

All games live on the company's servers. You are essentially buying a license to stream games to your "console". The local hard drive is just a big cache. So if you replace your hardware, all your games are still there, nothing happened to them.

However, a more interesting question is what happens to the games you "bought" when the company goes belly-up and it's servers disappear...

Re:No CD?

[shish]

> If I buy this console, and a friend buys it too, we can't trade games?

From the edge of a playstation CD:

"Unauthorised copying, adaption, rental, lending, distribution, extraction, [another 100 synonyms for neighbourly sharing], access or use of this product or any trademark or copyright work that forms part of this product are prohibited."

You can't even use your own games without authorisation!

Re:No CD?

[Niles_Stonne]

Should start a phone-in campaign, calling Sony every time you want to play a game to ask permission to put it into your system.

Re:No CD?

[/dev/trash]

What happens when your Tivo breaks down and the TV show you recorded is gone?

Re:No CD?

[Anonymous Coward]

What happens when your Tivo breaks down and the TV show you recorded is gone?

But with a TiVo you don't pay (the same company) for the shows. And TiVos typically act as a short/mid-term video cache. Stuff you want to keep forever you get out of the box and record, either to an analog output, or digitally (if you can figure it out).

I think a better analogy would be what happens to your TiVo's lifetime subscription when it breaks down. The answer to that is pretty obvious, though.

Re:No CD?

[Anonymous Coward]

If the games were affordable, would it matter?

Jigga, pleaze

[serial frame]

No way this will work, because there will still be thousands of people who would insist upon owning actual copies of the games they play. There may be other things to analyze, such as bandwidth costs, etc (depending on the sizes of the games). It would be interesting to see them offering broadband to go along with the game, because thousands upon thousands of people STILL use dial-up.

And from the sounds of it, game licensing seem pretty exclusive to Infinium Labs for new games. Will they be offering any assistance to third-party developers, or will they be reaping the benefits for themselves?

I'm pretty sure these ideas have already been thought of, but I'm just tossing them back onto the table. *shrug*

Re:Jigga, pleaze

[FreshFunk510]

That would be an interesting way for broadband to find its way into more american homes..selling internet connectivity with games. I wonder if they could somehow offer a prorated fee for only game usage.

Can't be!

[VernonNemitz]

If the only way to get data in or out of the system is via connection to outside servers, then I wouldn't want to own one. I want joysticks and a keyboard, at least, to input my data!

Offtopic but I genuinly am interested....

[greymond]

Why is it that everytime any OSDN site is mentioned in a slashdot blurb - the blurb gets "Somesite and Slashdot are both part of the OSDN network" added to it?

As for the Phantom Machine - I don't think it matters how proprietary this box is (considering all Consoles ARE very proprietary anyway) it's gonna come down to WHO has licensing rights to make games for it and WHAT games will be available on it.

It could be the best hardware ever designed in a console, but if it only plays Super Mighty Duck 3D - its gonna be a hard sell.

Re:Offtopic but I genuinly am interested....

[Hank Reardon]

Why is it that everytime any OSDN site is mentioned in a slashdot blurb - the blurb gets "Somesite and Slashdot are both part of the OSDN network" added to it?

It's a practice called full disclosure, and it's fairly common in a variety of broadcast and print media. Typically, it's done when there's an article or story about an entity or business that is, in some way, affiliated with the reporting source. Most news agencies use this as a "we think this is interesting, but we're biased" sort of disclaimer.

Originally, it was done in order to limit liability in SEC related stories; in particular, any story that could have a positive or negative bearing on a stock price. In the past several years, however, it's become more and more common to put these types of blurbs in any story that mentions a related holding.

In TV, radio, and print, you'll hear stuff like "as reported by our sister station", "reported by Publication A, owned by our parent corporation", or "our friends at Radio Station B".

As for why their doing it so profusely? My guess is that it's a combination of advertising and liability management.

"Patches? We don't need no steenking patches!"

[Paisley Phrog]

"Superior update and patch management"

No no no no *no*.

I play console systems so I don't have to deal with patches or updates at *all*. I don't care if the system is automated, if the download process is in the background. I don't want to think about the game that I just brought home, fresh out of shrinkwrap, needing some kind of patch in the undisclosed future to keep it stable/working/enable features/etc.

All I can see this system doing is bringing the same release-and-bugfix-later workflow that is in PC development into the realm of consoles. I think I'll pass.

Ummm ....

[bizitch]

Maybe this is a dumb question but ...

How do you - like - load games on it?

Re:Ummm ....

[Hank Reardon]

Here (empasis mine):

It uses a proprietary encryption method to protect the data on its harddrive, and the only thing that differentiates this 'game console' from a standard, Windows-running PC is that it has no way to get data on or off of it except through a dedicated connection to Infinium Labs' own servers.

Answer the question?

Re:Ummm ....

[Anonymous Coward]

RTFA.

You download them off their servers.

What To Do If They Go Bankrupt

[WC as Kato]

This is a risky proposition for the consumer. What would you do with this crippled PC if the company goes bankrupt? You can't use it anymore. You can't even run local games. It may not even be fit for modding. But I'm sure a true geek will manage a mod to get a blue LED on the thing.

Re:What To Do If They Go Bankrupt

[/dev/trash]

It's the same risk Tivo owners take. if tivo goes under, you've got yourself a good sized paper weight.

If it works, Microsoft will try to wipe/buy them

[MonkeyDluffy]

Frankly, this is the exact direction that I think Microsoft wants to take - make your PC a DRM locked multimedia console, with a subscription service. Infinium is just ahead of where Microsoft wants to go today :). But just watch - if they are successful, or even a minor failure, Microsoft will either buy them or try to wipe them out.

-MDL

I thought we already had an X-Box...

[Cloudgatherer]

Seriously, if this is no different from a PC, but has some added DRM features, what makes this different from an X-Box?

PC hardware, custom DRM, proprietary APIs (most likely), that sums up to X-Box. At least PS and Gamecubes aren't as blatant with the PC hardware (I'm sure there is some, but those units are designed for games, not just PCs configured for games).

In all honesty, do we really need another console?

Sounds Familiar

[shoemakc]

"As one industry observer pointed out when he first heard the Infinium Labs story, "You buy the console. You buy the games. Then you pay to play the games you bought on the console you bought. It's sort of like buying an arcade game but still having to put quarters in. And ads!"

Sounds like Circuit City's DIVX to me. God knows that went well.

-Chris

Or not.

[tevenson]

So, they want me to buy a set top computer that runs XP, won't let me change anything, and can only play games I download off the net. All this for only $400 and a monthly fee?

Wow, or I could spend that money making my OWN set top box which could:

• Connect to my wireless network to stream movies and music from my basement fileserver.
• Play games from the vast library that exists for PC (read: free if you're smart)
• Allow me to play older console games via emulators and a gamepad pro
• Hell, since I've got this little fast box I built I could also use it for LANS.

Sounds like this will sell well to me.... 8-|

crafted? created?

[Thinkit3]

The money issue I think is secondary to this. Nobody creates any information, ever! Information exists outside of time. If people just get away from this notion of creating information! Have you ever "created" some piece of art? How do you know somebody hasn't done the exact same thing independently?

MS is alredy there....

[mabhatter654]

If this ran Linux it might be news for the novelty. Running XP just makes it a big fat target for MS, unless that's the plan by looking at his record.

MS has already declared war on PC gaming when they created XBox after using us all for DirectX testing. This would only speed up the process more by fracturing the already fragile PC games market. What game producer can support the platform duality? Even the big ones like EA have to port PC stuff to consoles just because a drop in the console market is a huge percent compaired to PC sales.

We've already got AOL and Gamespy for pay-to-play games, not even that part is novel. The only novel thing about the box is DRM...and nobody wants that! People would rather pay $400 for an e-machine than for another "console".

People that create these schemes underestimate the power of retail! The ability to put something new and shiny in your hands is a fundamental ingredient of electronic entertainment. It's also a social thing of going to the local game store, browsing the aisles, and chatting with the usual people.

Re:MS is alredy there....

[rokzy]

MS attacking PC gaming means attacking themselves. the only reason I use Windows is because of PC games.

Re:Fair use? (Doggie Rights Mgmt)

[Rick.C]

If I buy a box of doggie treats, am I forbidden to eat them myself? After all, the manufacturer created them for the stated purpose of feeding dogs. They could argue that I agreed to this use when I purchased them (the box clearly stated that they were for dogs).

Following your logic, if I didn't want to give them to a dog, I didn't have to buy them. Assuming they were cheaper than a box of crackers (not necessarily valid!), am I depriving the Treats Industry of their due profits?

Cable, DSL...

[malakai]

It simply needs broadband. By dedicated connection they mean plug it into your home's hub. And before someone says that Home Users don't have access to broadband at the scales needed to pull this off:

The FCC released their biannual report (.pdf file) today, which reported 16.2 million broadband customers (households) in the U.S. as of June 2002, up from 9.6 million one year earlier. The report also indicates that most users should be well within the range of a broadband option. "Our analysis indicates that 98 percent of the country's population lives in the 84 percent of zip codes where a provider reports having at least one high-speed service subscriber."

-malakai

Re:Cable, DSL...

[b1t r0t]

Anyone who thinks that "at least one subscriber in a zip code" is a good metric has never seen the zip code map of west Texas.

How is Infinium going to make a go of this?

[schmerk]

Not knowing anything about Infinium Labs, I wonder how they are going to be able to make a go of this new console. M$ is selling the XBox hardware at a loss in hopes of getting the money back in game sales. For Infinium to make the price point to make this console fly in the consumer realm they are probably going to have to take a HUGE losses on the sale of hardware. Plus they have to pay royalties to M$ for WinXP on each box which M$ atleast doesn't have to do. I don't know how big of a company Infinium Labs is, but I would guess they don't have the capital to get this system off the launching pad so the subscription can start making the money back. I see this as going the way of Indrema.

A box that only runs B titles? No.

[Animats]

The basic problem with their business model is that nobody wants to pay for a box that runs thousands of second-tier games. You can get those games from the bargain CD rack at the used computer store. This outfit's plan sounds like the original MP3.com business model - give distribution to thousands of garage bands and profit. Didn't work.

Writing an A game title today is a $10 million or so job. They have to be on the top platforms.

Re:A box that only runs B titles? No.

[Anita Coney]

I agree totally. This is asinine. Why would any one choose to spend $400 to play second rate games when they could spend half as much and play all the top games.

Plus, you can rent console games. You can loan out the copy of copy of consol games. It appears with the Phantom that all games are tied to the hard drive.

And that whole idea that smaller game developers can get their stuff published and sold via the Phantom is ludicrous. There already is such a platform in place. The PC. If people won't buy these games for their PC, why would they ever buy them after buying a Phantom?!

Re: Incorporating the "????" step.

[PetiePooo]

I'll have to take your word that its snazzy. I refuse to load Flash. In fact, that's my favorite part about Mozilla over IE: Mozilla doesn't keep asking you if you want to install it at Every! Damn! Site! that has an Annoying! Animation!!!

Its easy to vote with your dollars if you dive to other sites as soon as you get a "Site Requirement: Macromedia Flash" message...

*sigh* When will they learn...

Wow, a new market created for geeks...

[rokzy]

in crap overpriced hardware that isn't running linux.

Anyone working repairing broken computers, just slap a "made for Windows" sticker on and sell to slashdotters for $500.

moreso, ideas exist outside of time.

[Thinkit3]

Isn't this obvious? Ok, since ideas can be "discovered" independently, you can only assume that nobody can create an idea.

Re:moreso, ideas exist outside of time.

[SoftCoreHonesty]

You also can not copyright ideas unless you right them down. Even then they have to be original ideas and not something that somebody else has already written down. Are you starting to understand yet? Copyright is all about tangibility. A million people can have the same idea for a story but only the first one to write it down gets the prize. Notice I said write it down and not register it. Copyrights start when you put something into tangible form. Register it only makes it easier when it comes time to defend it.

I suggest you take a look at the copyright site I linked above and read through some of the facts. I think if you understand the true intent of copyright and not the disaster that is copyright is now you would have an easier time understanding what we are talking about.

Thanks but no thanks

[konfoo]

If this is in fact a PC in a fancy case running Windows, DRM usage is completely understandable. Other console manufacturers have the capability to protect their investment using hardware. Either custom hardware, or hardware protection is used by all the (Gamecube's CD mechanism, Xbox's .xbe signing, etc.) By these guys running a game console on something as easily 'hacked' as Windows (maybe they didn't have enough VC to fab a new system), one can understand why they have chosen to protect their investment using software DRM. If it will work, who knows. I somehow doubt it. The most interesting fact however is if they are using software protection due to a lack of VC, how pray tell will they compete with the big boys in terms of market penetration? Too many unknowns == avoid at all costs?

Technical advantages of consoles

[yerricde]

At which point, why buy the console?

Windows crashes. Most cheap PCs don't ship with TV output. For games not in keyboard-and-mouse genres, the PS1 joypad reacts better than most PC joypads (that is, except for PS1 joypads hooked up through the EMS USB2 adapter (compare prices).

Re:Technical advantages of consoles

[Anonymous Coward]

Eh? He's talking about this new PC. Which has XP. Besides, XP doesn't crash, and tv out is cheap and plentiful.

Re:Technical advantages of consoles

[MidnightLightning]

%s/\(doesn't crash\)/\1 very often/

Although XP is quite stable, it does crash once in a while (It crashed the day after I had installed it, but it hasn't crashed since, which is one more time than Win2K ever crashed). Although I haven't owned a game console since the Sega Genesis, I have never had a game console crash. Going from "doesn't crash" to "doesn't crash very often" is going from better to worse, not vice versa.

Re:Technical advantages of consoles

[aflat362]

You probably just F'd up the install. One crash? None since? Why not dismiss it as a fluke and not worry about it.

Re:Technical advantages of consoles

[yerricde]

XP doesn't crash

You mean "an application can't take down Windows XP." I wasn't talking about app-induced crashes but rather driver-induced crashes. See, the PC hardware is a highly variable thing and needs drivers from several vendors to make it work. These drivers can and often do have defects that cause system instability.

and tv out is cheap and plentiful.

But not yet standard on new entry-level PCs, which means that a PC owner has to buy another $100 video card to be able to display the PC's output on an affordable display larger than 19" diagonal.

Forgot one

[fobbman]

7. SCO will claim to have put the ink in the pen, and sue everyone who uses said pen.

Games on Demand

[Ezubaric]

There seems to be quite a bit of bashing here because it's "just a PC." I think there is quite a bit of opportunity here, though, if they play their cards well.

Problem: You can't rent PC games

• They're too easy to copy
• Makers don't want to risk crippled versions with "copy protection" because the platform is inherently open
• Most people buy a small number of PC games, but those who do try out many games usually do so through the cumbersome process piracy (and then why buy?)

Solution: Secure the system

Yahoo has tried to do this, but you need to make a completely new version of the game. This console version (in theory) can let you play any game made for the PC immediately. But because it's "secure," makers won't mind their old games being rented on the platform, but why buy a crippled PC? It would be nice to have something like it for the PC.

Roll-up, roll-up

[pubjames]

Gather round Ladies and Gentlemen to see three giants battle it out for dominance! They're huge, they're ugly, they are

Ta da da...

The Japanese fire-breathing dragon -- Godzilla!!!

Ta da da...

The American 600 pound gorilla -- King Kong!!!

And a new entrant Ta da da...

We've never met him but he says he's really really good, honestly -- The Phantom!!!

Place your bets Ladies and Gentlemen!

Junis reporting in...

[LordOfYourPants]

After many months of digging I have finally unveiled the Phantom game console.

The first thing I tried was to modify it to play my Baywatch VCD and SVCDs. These run just fine on my Commodore-64 but the console has no CD/DVD-ROM. What was I to do?

That's fine. I can handle that. I felt around in the sand for a bit looking for the buried T1 cable (buried so no one trips on it at night). After 30 minutes of searching I found it and plugged it into the console.

I crossed my fingers as I turned the power on (the wind speeds were low) and was wowed by the title screen. It says "Please enter your name, credit card number, and expiry." I did this and I was set to go.

After that a huge fanfare played and congratulated me on my credit card being approved. It told me that my system was now physically tied to my credit card and future purchases would be charged without any recourse for a refund.

The first game I downloaded was "Tony Hawk 2." It took about 40 minutes to get but they show you a really neat progress bar that looks like brushed metal.

While the game was downloading I decided to dig up the latest Linux journals and found myself fuming at the latest SCO scandal. Poor Linux Torwellars.

Anyway, I digress. The game finally started and it was fantastic. Tony Hawk looked really good, and so did the console. Soon enough, hundreds of people were huddling around my new-found console. The whole village was near tears. Someone asked "Can I borrow that game?" I explained that I'd have to lend them my whole console. After many tears I broke down and just gave it to him, but asked him to promise not to buy any more games while he was using it. He said "OK."

Anyway, with the console out of my hands I re-hooked my Commodore-64 to the T1 line and resumed downloading the latest VIP episodes. I can't get enough of Pamela Anderson. I will get back to you after I have purchased more games.

I really think this console is the future. Soon enough we'll have linux working on it and I will be able to again run the great programs such as "ls" "rm" and "mv" instead of playing games.

The point is in the article, natch

[mblase]

If development for it is exactly the same as the PC, why develop games for this console?

It's called "economics". PC users pay $1000-$2000 (depending on the game requirements) for a machine that can play one $40 purchased game, and the Phantom marketers are betting you'd rather pay $400 for the machine and $10/month for all the games (well, and ads) you can eat.

Does anyone really think Microsoft will sit still while some upstart to beats down the XBox?

XBox uses purchased games with added online features. It's not subscription-based gaming, just subscription-based multiplayer. They're in the same market as the Sony PS2, not the Phantom.

Crackable Crypto

[sterno]

Let's start by saying the console is real, not vaporware. I've seen a working prototype in action. Inside the spacy-looking case it's just a PC running Windows XP that has no CD or floppy drive, and uses a proprietary encryption scheme for data stored on its hard drive.

Proprietary encryptions scheme? Name me one proprietary encryption scheme that has held up to reverse engineering efforts. This will get cracked, probably quickly, and then you'll have another big DMCA fiasco over it as people try to install Linux on the box for fun.

*BSD Would be better, but even so it would be DOA

[FreeUser]

Why are they running Windows? In all seriousness, why not Linux or something else? If they run Windows, then the must pay MS money for every console they make.

GNU/Linux wouldn't work, as a key component of their business plan (and probably a key component of their spectacular failure) is crippling their hardware through DRM encryption. Assuming a kernel driver is needed to access the hardware, and that they don't want to force users to compile the kernel upon purchasing tha machine (i.e. assuming a binary distribution of the kernel), they would have to provide sources to their driver, thereby revealing the 'secret' of their DRM technology. As much of the DRM technology involves 'security through obscurity' snakeoil, they aren't about to do this. (Remember, a binary-only driver taints the kernel, and IIRC you cannot ship a precompiled, tainted kernel).

OTOH they could use FreeBSD and release as many internally hacked, proprietary versions as they like. So while I'm an avid user of Linux (of the Gentoo flavor, personally), Linux would probably be the last choice for a closed, crippled system like this that relies at least in part on secrecy to function. Even if they were to develop their own, in-house, proprietary DRM encryption scheme, they will likely prefer to leverage Microsoft's existing, extensive efforts in crippling their customer's future hardware through DRM rather than have to adopt FreeBSD to the task and do all the work themself.

It is a foolish tradeoff, as FreeBSD offers no competing product, while Microsoft's X-Box is clearly a competitor, making them beholden to a competitor for a key component of their own product. Another reason, in addition to the poor bang/$, crippling DRM, and subscription approach issues, that the product is almost certain to be DOA. Any one of those issues alone would be enough to kill the product, but taken together they make it's liklihood of survival approximately 0%.

proprietary encryption - broken

[plcurechax]

uses a proprietary encryption scheme

translated:

Some crappy, broken scheme baked up by programmers not professional cryptographers.

I'm glad it is not my venture captial money backing this broken puppy.

Sigh. Snake Oil FAQ or the Crypto mini FAQ and various Cryptogram will remind you, proprietary encryption is very bad.

Re:No CD? - ie Steam

[Mike Hawk]

This is where the console is most close to Steam (Valve's system of online game and patch distribution). Yet people seem to defend Steam.

In both cases it sounds like you are going to stream content onto your console or PC but never actually get a real tangible copy to keep.

Steam scares me when it comes to actually distributing games in this manner. I'll definitely still be going to a nice real store to buy the nice real CD. Even patches, it wreaks of a way to get around the publisher (and third party for consoles) imposed quality control and let the public beta-test EVERYTHING that comes out, with the consumer paying for this "privilege".

Off-topic maybe, but tangental. The two systems seem so similar in theory.

Har, har.

[Inoshiro]

I really doubt this "Phantom" will make any dent whatsoever. Look what it's up against: Xbox, GameCube, GameBoy Advance, Playstation 2.

These are all focused consoles with their own markets. There is overlap, but it's fairly well satured. Everyone who has broadband and cares about games will have an Xbox with Xbox Live!. Everyone who wants neat Japanese games will have a GameCube and PS2. Etc!

The Phantom is a joke. MS can pull off PC components in a game console because they have clout with nVidia and other people to spend millions of dollars fabbing specific parts. That company probably doesn't, as evidenced by their use of XP as the environment for the console.

What kind of game console doesn't have a bare-bones OS and SDK libs that are meant only for running one application ever?

Re:Har, har.

[Jungle guy]

Apparently, they used Windows XP to ease to port of PC games for their console, and not because they can't develop a platform.

Re:Har, har.

[cristofer8]

I'd guess that they'd use XP embedded instead of regular xp for just that reason. They can pick and choose what options to include.

Re:Har, har.

[mattwolfewvu]

"Everyone who has broadband and cares about games will have an Xbox with Xbox Live!."

I have broadband. I care about games. I do not have, and most likely never will get, an Xbox, let alone Xbox Live. I'm perfectly happy with my PS2, Gamecube, PC, PS1, Saturn, SNES, GBA, and GB Color, thank you very much.

Re:Har, har.

[a.deity]

I definitely agree with that. I've got broadband, I definitely care about games, but I don't care too much about most sports games. I miss Halo, but I see that as a stolen game, rather than an "XBox Exclusive." My GameCube, GBA, Emulator collection (PS1, SNES, NES, GBA, all with either original games or self-ripped ROMs), iBook, and Dreamcast will get me through everything I want them to.

I said it last time...

[JFMulder]

... and I'm gonna say it again : this is gonna suck, that's why I call it a Phantom Menace.

Re:crafted? created?

[SoftCoreHonesty]

I think you spend a little too much time listening to RMS. You don't copyright information. That is not possible. It is actually very clearly state on the Copyright website -

You cannot copyright..."Works consisting entirely of information that is common property and containing no original authorship."

You can copyright your tangible analysis of information as long as it contains thoughts and ideas that are your own.

As for the money issue, copyright was created entirely with the idea of providing a living for people who create works of art and science.

Finally, I have created many works of art. I even consider this post to be a work of art. I find it very unlikely, however, that somebody in this universe is creating the same exact thing at the same exact time.

This is a good idea

[isoga]

I dont understand why everyone is so negative. Its cool for the consumer and game designers -

You get basically unlimited games for a flat fee. Try a game, dont like it? Move on to another. You dont end up with a pile of crappy carts or CDs.

Second, for parents, they can control the games kids see. Have 8 year old kids? You can block unreal and Doom and just allow access to the Blues-Clues genre.

Third, having the network in place means it easy to have multiplayer games.

Fourth, it runs Windows XP - Porting the games from regular PCs or XBoxes will be easy / cheap

Fifth, becuase of the huge catalog and no need for middlemen, lots of little game publishers will get the chance to shine. They arent restricted to convincing Circuit City to give them shelfspace plus they dont have to worry about all the hassles of duplication and packaging they'd need to sell through regular channels

dave -- Check out my website!

Good games = good income, the rest is greed

[2TecTom]

In my humble opinion, the real issue here is excessive profits and corporate greed. Every single DRM scheme is nothing more. If these people didn't have such Great Expectations, they wouldn't need these schemes. Look, dood, rather than trying to squeeze every penny from your audience, wouldn't you be more succesful trying to provide them with what they will freely pay for? Personally, I consider anything less than a freely entered into transaction as extortion and theft. Is any wonder that so many see a double standard here, which begs the question as to whether there is any real justice in this land.

If the time and all the money that was spent on such selfish nonsense was directed at creation, we'd all be far, far richer. Besides, people like John Carmack, who actually deserve credit, have had no problems getting rich despite all the so-called "piracy".

You know, I believe that while competition is good, cooperation is the true power behind all worthwhile accomplishments. So I ask, with all due respect, why don't the affluent people try supporting the rest of us? After all, really, we would all do much better, if we played as a team, rather than as a arrogant bunch of prima donnas.

wrong.

[mutewinter]

Of course you aren't required to buy it, but thats not the point. The point is, if I buy something why can't I do what I want with it? I'm not talking about buying chemicals and making bombs, or constructing biological weapons in your basement. The point is, circumventing DRM systems would (presumably) require you to break the DMCA. So say I bought a pen, and wanted to learn about it. In the process I happened to "reverse engineer" it. According to the DMCA, I am now a criminal.

So what just happened? Big business used the government as a solution to their own problem. In other words, us, American taxpayers, are risking our money on an investment with no return to us, but an infinate return to a select group of other individuals. Thats not part of the free market, and it certainly wasn't my choice.

Re:wrong.

[CashCarSTAR]

Agreed, but go one step further. Even if you vote with your wallet, the companies are so full of hubris, that they would never believe that people are staying away because of DRM. They would blame piracy, fraud, or simply lie about it.

You bought it, it's yours. You can do whatever you want with it, besides distribute it to other people.

Re:wrong.

[Alan Partridge]

INFINITE

Just because your accent doesn't allow you to pronounce words correctly, doesn't mean you can spell them incorrectly too.

Re:wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

Perfection must be such a burden. How do you make it through the day with all us idiots around?

Re:wrong.

[Alan Partridge]

it's a long and winding road

get a fucking spellchecker installed

Re:wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why should I? I know how to spell.

Re:wrong.

[mutewinter]

And in the long term, what will happen to the companies (short of some super DMCA law)? They will fail.

Take the record labels for example. Some of you may know Jim Cramer from CNBC or his radio show. Well, I was listening to his radio show a few weeks ago, right after the big RIAA threat that they were going after individuals. A caller asked Jim if he should invest in the companies which are basically doing the mass-scanning of Kazaa. Cramer said no. I wish I had an audio clip of the next statement he said, but it was basically this:

I had managed money for some major players in the music industry, and back in the late 90s they got out of it. The people in the industry now are delusional, etc.. (I really really wish I had a direct quote of this because its already escaping my mind.)

Reguardless, if experienced investors are no longer willing to put their money in the record industry it will ultimately fall. The point is, if an industry chooses to ignore a problem that is causing them to loose sales, they will cease to exist (or become a government subsidy, like say, amtrack.) The RIAA knows they are loosing sales to p2p, and they are fighting for their life right now. Piracy takes a big bight into the pockets of content producers. However, sometimes the free market players seek a solution with the government in an effort to make money, and in the process violate the rights of individuals.

DRM is one thing. For many hackers its just a game. The protection of DRM itself, through the law, is a whole different thing, and frankly I feel it is immoral.

What a good idea.

[Zebra_X]

If it's a PC and it runs XP... then it's graphics language of choice is Direct X, Open GL or another PC/Desktop compatible API. PC Game makers have been continually losing ground to the pc market. I think this is primarily because hardware is so rapidly obseleced in the gaming world. The cost of a machine that lends itself to a reasonable "experience" costs to much to own/upgrade/purchase on an ongoing basis.
Enter the console - buy it, hook it up and play very simple really AND works 99% of the time. The user does not have to worry about the console not performing well. It's not the end users problem, it's the game makers problem. Consoles are simple, and easy to use, and most importantly: Reliable. The choice of XP could render that last point a moot one. But this console could quite possibly be the bridge from the PC world to the Console world. I imagine that PC game makers would be anxious to retrofit their games to this piece of hardware. It's makes a lot of sense from a business perspective. If you can't beat em' (The console makers) join em'.

Proprietary Encryption

[codewritinfool]

"It uses a proprietary encryption method to protect the data on its harddrive"

Five dollars says that won't stand up a month. (I'm more sure of myself than that, I'm just poor.)
Paul

rand() thoughts

[WTFmonkey]

There was a great article in a recent Game Developer mag about the what it takes to port from PC to console (the example they worked through was JK2). All kinds of problems, mostly dealing with controls; for example, that little joystick thing on a gamepad is way less accurate than a mouse, so they had to turn the auto-aim up to compensate, but not so much that the player felt like the game was being played for them. Also, anyone who's played JK2 knows that the lightsaber battles require a lot of buttons, say you want to force push while you're in a saber lock, so they actually had to change game rules to allow for lower functionality. Seems like a pretty crappy trade-off to me.

On a distantly related note, when Return to Castle Wolfenstein:Enemy Territory was released, I thought, "Hey, free game," and downloaded it. It turned out to be so great that I willingly paid the $35 bucks at Target the next day for RTCW. If someone had said, "Hey, want to burn a copy of my RTCW?" I'd have said, "Naw, it's a fun game, I'm okay with chumping out $35 since everything they've ever done has whomped ass." That's how to sell video games.

Windows XP

[NoRemorse]

if its based on xp (or any microsoft os at that) wouldnt you need to patch it just about every other week? and since its on a broadband connection wouldnt you think id need a firewall? i can see all the brodband uses getting theyre 'phantom' owned and used as ddos zombies

Locked data? yeah, right

[YrWrstNtmr]

the only thing that differentiates this 'game console' from a standard, Windows-running PC is that it has no way to get data on or off of it except through a dedicated connection to Infinium Labs' own servers

Right.

Unless this thing is encased in a solid block of Lucite, it's only a matter of time.

DRM = 1984 Materialized

[felonious]

With all of this DRM talk it seems as if it's the most important subject these days. If anything was ever the epitome of "big brother" it would be DRM. You buy a product but don't own it and only have certain uses for it as stipulated by what ever multi-national conglomerate.

These corporations are yielding more and more power and with their deep pockets they are shaping our future laws. Most people are completely ignorant to what is transpiring and the ramifications as applied to all parts of life. I'm not full of paranoia but the truth is right before our eyes.

I find it beyond frightening when a guy is busted for releasing the new Hulk movie online and is sentenced to a longer jail term than a rapist/robber. That was a very powerful moment to me. It says everything about the type of power behind the DRM movement.

I can see it getting to a point where the DRM is embedded in hardware and people who are anti-drm no longer upgrade because of this. The people who are ambivalent to all of this are in for a world of hurt once DRM starts to permeate through all parts of society and it's products.

As said before our only hope for ridding ourselves of DRM and it's derivatives is to speak with your wallet. The sad thing is we are a minority. The majority has no clue. DRM, disposable DVD's, & game keys are only the beginning if we don't make a strong statement.

I practice what I preach so I hope others do too.

I only have one question...

[Woy]

Will it run linux now or later?

DRM systems = white wall syndrome

[heironymouscoward]

Taggers can't resist a blank wall and hackers can't resist a DRM system.
Let me guess the ways the Phantom PC will phall:
1. Someone will hack the network protocol and find a way to stream those downloaded games to unprotected media.
2. Someone will find a bug in part of the DRM (the loader, maybe) that allows code to be inserted into the stack and WHAM.
3. Someone will make the inevitable mod chip and inevitably be sued.
4. Someone will... heck this is getting boring.
Did no-one learn a lesson from the 1980's? Guys, you CANNOT COPY PROTECT SOFTWARE!!! Jeez. It's like the movie where the bad guy says to the cop: "to stay alive, you have to have a good day, every day. If I (the crook) have just one good day, you're dead and I win."
Aw, let the games begin!

Re:*BSD Would be better, but even so it would be D

[Grishnakh]

GNU/Linux wouldn't work, as a key component of their business plan (and probably a key component of their spectacular failure) is crippling their hardware through DRM encryption. [snip] they would have to provide sources to their driver, thereby revealing the 'secret' of their DRM technology. [snip] (Remember, a binary-only driver taints the kernel, and IIRC you cannot ship a precompiled, tainted kernel).

No, I don't think this is the case at all. As long as the binary-only driver is not compiled into the kernel, but loaded as a module (a la NVidia's binary-only driver), it's ok.

The really dumb thing about them using Windoze is that they have to pay a license fee for each console sold, and this fee will likely be high since MS probably won't give them any good deals since they're competing with the Xbox.

This license fee will inflate the cost of the console, which already sounds overpriced compared to the competition. Sure, using Windoze allows them to leverage the existing PC games, but if the price is high, it's still not going to work. Anyone remember the Neo Geo and how well it sold in the US with its $600 price tag?

This company trying to compete with MS using MS's own OS is like trying to build a competing version of hell, and licensing brimstone from the devil to do it with. It's hard to compete effectively when you rely on one of your main competitors to be a supplier. Not just hard, stupid really.

One significant difference from the 2600 et al

[NaugaHunter]

If I had River Raid, and a friend had Pitfall II, we could simply trade cartridges. That's it. No online registration, no serial numbers, no boot-sector tampering. In other words, the concept is not exactly the same. You couldn't copy them, but you could use them with as many different devices as you'd like.

Yes, this is partly because having overly-difficult-too-copy hardware is different from fairly-easy-to-copy CD/DVDs. The problem is when DRM goes too far, and prevents legal use. Want to use your software at a friend's? Sorry. Want to install it on your sister's so she can play when you're not home? Nope. Tired of it, and want to sell it? Uh-uh - you don't own anything to sell.

So really, we didn't have DRM then. There were ways to copy the ROMs (they're all on line, if you want them). It just wasn't easy. Now that it is easy, DRM makes it impossible - removing legal use as well as illegal use.

dumb americans

[alienhazard]

I believe this venture will fail for one simple reason. People (especially in the USA) are dumb. or if they arent dumb, they dont want to mess with all these featuers. After reading the article it made me think of ICQ vs. AIM. ICQ has more features and is technically better, but it takes a bit more intelligence to use. AIM is fecal, but easy to use, and therefore most americans use it. Xbox/GC/PS2 might not have such neat features, but they are easy to use. I'm sure the Phantom will be easy, but people wont understand the advantages

btw, who wants to dl >800mb each time you get a game? only warez mongers :)

Is this really cost efficient?

[JFMulder]

I mean, it says that you wil still have to pay less for you games. Ok, so I'll throw some numbers around. Right now 200$ for an XBOX. if you buy 5 games each year, you'll end up paying about 225$ dollars a year for games.
Let's say you use it 4 years. In total, you'll have spent about 1100$ for your 4 years of fun.

Now do the game math with their system.
400$ for the machine, add to the subscription fee for 4 years (essentially 9.99$ a month), you get and you get 880$. You are now left with 130$ dollars. Now, if they still want to beat XBOX on price, they are to charge maximum 6$ per games if you still want to own 20 games after 4 years. It said in the article that you would still have to buy the games at first, then rent them. He compared the idea to buying an arcade, and then putting quarters in it, which I find kinda dumb, but still, let's go on with our calculations.

Sooooooo. Even if they do sell the games 3$ (yeah right...), now that most consoles games ships on a DVD and may be bout 3 or 4 gigs (or if they're not, they'll be real soon), how the hell am I supposed to pay all the extra bandwidth these games will require to my ISP? For my part, I can download 10 gigs a month with my ISP. But a lot of people I know have only 5 gigs. So let's say you want that new Star Wars game with a hundred hours of FMV and it's 6 gigs. Then I guess you f***ed for one month and can't use the Internet, unless you want to pay more money for the bandwidth you used over your limit. (8.95$ CAN/Gig where I live, so about 5$US/Gig)

So this thing will make money unless
a) the games are unbelievably good and only on their console (not likely)
or
b) it's customers are not well educated (or stupid if you prefer to put it that way)

Even tough I think that scenario b) has a lot more of chances to happen that a), I don't think that this will work.

I'd almost be willing to put my hand in a fire if did succeed, but judging from the popularity of some products (none come to mind right now, but you know, there's something each week that you see on TV and you tell yourself "Are people really buying those? Am I the only one who doesn't?"), I won't.

Re:Is this really cost efficient?

[retro128]

You are assuming these guys even have developers lined up for this thing in the first place. They can't even get their web page to work (clicked "broadband" from their main page and up comes a blank screen...just priceless)

I googled for the Phantom and so far my suspicions are confirmed that there aren't really any developers. It might play PC games, but come on - if you are right the thing costs $400, and it doesn't have anything but a TV out and a broadband connect. On top of that, these days you can get an OK PC for $400.

The other thing to consider is the insane competition in the console market. Even old timer Sega couldn't make ends meet and got weeded out in a market they have traditionally done well in. How is this little piss-ant with no developers, a web site that doesn't work, and a repackaged PC that costs twice as much as anything else on the market even going to have a prayer?

It sounds to me like the Phantom is just that.

I read it the other way.

[twitter]

the only thing that differentiates this 'game console' from a standard, Windows-running PC is that it has no way to get data on or off of it except through a dedicated connection to Infinium Labs' own servers. .... Yet.

Did anyone else read this as, "soon there will be no way to get data on or off XP except through a dedicated connection to M$"? Who said the .NET "service" model is dead?

Re:I read it the other way.

[M.C. Hampster]

Did anyone else read this as, "soon there will be no way to get data on or off XP except through a dedicated connection to M$"?

Actually, since most people can read around here, I'm gonna guess you are the only one.

The Phantom Menace

[wynterwynd]

I think the biggest stumbling block this console's going to face will be the fact that you HAVE to download the games.

Even IF they can do what only a handful of companies succeed at (breaking into the console market and building a solid player base) then judging from my experiences with online console play and even PC online games, the Infinium servers are going to be so hammered that nobody will be able to get anything in a reasonable amount of time. Not to mention the unreliability of home high-speed connections. There will be a great wailing and gnashing of teeth. And if the servers aren't hammered, then the console will fail because of lack of subscriptions.

I have serious doubts about the DRM features of the console as well. I'm sure that some software companies would be happy to see the DRM elements in place, but I seriously doubt that many will be willing to invest a significant amount of effort in a 'first of it's kind' system when the industry trend shows a tendency for groundbreaking hardware to fall flat on it's face, only to be revised, improved, and re-released later under a major label. Turbografx 16, Jaguar, 3D0, all with elements ahead of their time, all dead now and their technology picked over by the market leaders.

In the end, it's about having good games and offering something your competition doesn't. The only new thing the Phantom seems to offer is DRM protection for the software companies and tedious, frustrating downloads for the gamers. Whoopee. I predict a failure worthy of Waterworld.

I don't know about this

[hesiod]

(note: this is a lot of rambling & ranting, it won't necessarily all make sense to you.)

They don't seem too keen on people actually using their site. When I tried to get to it, it told me I don't have Flash 6 (which I do, unfortunately), and then I clicked "Continue" to go on anyway it came back to tell me again that I don't have Flash. Fucking brilliant. So I decided to see if I could find something else, just for the heck of it. (after this, too, for some reason, the rest of the site worked) I went to /images/ and got this:

> YOU ARE NOT AUTHORIZED!
> AND WILL BE REPORTED TO THE PROPER AUTHORITIES!
> Your are attempting to illegally login into a secure server and may be breaking the electronic wire fraud laws.
> We monitor all login attempts and report any violations to the FBI we find suspicious.
> We will not tolerate any hacker attempts to this server.
> We record your IP address and originating domain and much more information to track you down. We use advanced intrusion detection software that reports to our security department in real-time and will allow them to see any intrusion attempts.
> Please be advised that we take this very seriously! We will take the full course of action in any occurrence!
> To report anything contact:
> security@infiniumlabs.com

I am not authorized? Authorized for what!? And they're going to report me to the authorities for going to the wrong page. Yeah, funny. And I like how they assume I am breaking into their server. Not to mention they'll have a pretty damned hard time trying to track me down. And of course, Going to an images directory = Advanced Cracking techniques, woo. So now I will be at the mercy of these people taking their full course of action against me (which is? Absolutely fucking nothing). *COWER*

That page is so silly that it makes me wonder if one or both of the following 2 are true:
1) Their webmaster is an idiot
2) This is a hoax/vaporware (there's probably a good reason it's called a phantom)

The article claims it isn't vaporware, but they give no reason to actually believe that, or why they say that.
The company currently doesn't seem to sell anything other than hats, mugs, and shirts.
The beta-testing application is pretty badly designed, especially compared to the rest of the site, but I guess that's not really a reason to doubt the existence of its product. Speaking of which, Why the HELL would they want my resume? WTF does that matter? After trying to sign up JFTFOI, the Sign Up button did nothing. Great.

Re:I don't know about this

[Anonymous Coward]

I just tried that.

They should update their page ("Your are attempting to...") to say:

OH MY GOODNESS!!!!!!!!!
Your web browser has uploaded data containing "get /images/" to our web page server which you are illegally logging into! This is highly illegal and you may be breaking some laws! Stop it before we hit you with a stick.

where did you want to go yesterday?

[twitter]

Reminds me of "Funny Farm" when the telco installed a payphone in Chevy Chase's house.

And some people still don't see where XP is taking them.

Re:Fair use? You're quoting history..

[q2a]

Do we have to remind you for the 50billionth time that this level of fair use is history aka. pre-DMCA?
(that is if there is ANY DRM involved.)

And yes, there are people fighting this.

Re:Fair use? The real moral

[frovingslosh]

Ironically, I was able to make a copy of the CD with my phillips burner that then played fine on her stereo.

Moral of the story: copy protected CD's hurt consumers.

The real moral, if this is the total story, is that the label and the stores don't care. As far as they know they just made another sale. The CD should have been returned to the store (after you made your copy) as not suitable for it's indended use and you should have received a full refund. That way copy protection hurts the people it should and when this happens enough it might go away.

Wow...what a web site!

[Aqua OS X]

I hope these guys spend as much money on product development and licencing as the did for that expensive a** website.

I think that thing was able to fire laser beams out of my monitor.

Re:Wow...what a web site!

[ChaoticLimbs]

I agree. That was the most impressive use of Flash I have ever seen. Ever.

Who actually funds these companies

[Dr_LHA]

I mean - who comes up with the cash to pay for the development of crap like this. Are VCs really idiots. If I ran a VC company the meeting between me and Infinium Labs would go something like this:

Me: So what's you idea
IL: We're going to make a console that will compete with Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft in an already saturated market.
Me: Next!

Fatal Flaw

[tomkins]

I see a big problem with Infinium's business model. Their console runs on Windows XP. They are therefore dependent on Microsoft while trying to compete with them in a market Microsoft desperately wants. There's a formula for failure if I've ever seen one. If they have any success at all, MS will lay the smack down on them. I'm sure the venture capitalists must have raised that issue. I wonder how Infinium managed to talk them out of 25 million.

Vote with MY wallet? Why would I want to do that?

[evenparity]

You could just circumvent their DRM and vote with THEIR wallet. ;-)

Win XP in a home console at a fair price?

[frovingslosh]

What a strange story. I find it very hard to believe that anyone could be putting Win XP in a home console that they intend to sell for a fair price. You know M$ isn't giving them a sweetheart deal on the pricing of this software.

The irony is that Bill may loose money on every X-box he sells, but he would make money on every Phantom his competitor sells! This just sounds like such bad business on the company's part to me that I now really believe that either the thing is an investor scam or the company is so mismanaged as to make their survival unlikely. No point in getting any console if the company is about to go under.

And who in their right mind would release a game console when they can't see or change the basic OS that drives it? If this thing ever was successful, they have given M$ the perfect way to kill them. Given the M$ history of sabotaging everything from DR-DOS to Open-GL, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that you don't put the enemy's secret software in your expensive product that competes directly with theirs.

Bootleg pens?

[Aqua OS X]

ehh, no offense, but I don't think that was the best analogy.

Do you license your pens? Or have you ever purchased 1 pen, reverse engineered it over night, copied it, and then distributed boxes of bootleg Dr. Grips freely in your home town?

Data is not really a physical thing... so you can really compare it to something you can touch and feel.

It doesn't matter

[dmadole]

None of these arguments matter because this business won't succeed anyway.

It says in the article that they need to sell about 1,000,000 units to break even. If TiVo still can't sell 1,000,000 units (last I saw it was about 600,000) at the same price point for something so obviously useful and revolutionary, then there's no way that they're going to sell 1,000,000 units of this mildly rehashed old idea of questionable use.

Re:It doesn't matter

[gearheadsmp]

They may sell 1,000,000 units, but the estimate assumes all the buyers will sign up for their subscription plan. And in order to price them competitively, they'll prolly price them below $200. Which means I'll be getting my mom a new web/mail "PC" for $200 that has way better components than the $200 WalMart Linux PC. Bonus points for whoever can get the Linux edition of Doom 3 to run on it :)

Yeah, didn't you see?

[douglips]

He just woke up from a coma and still thinks Reagan is president.

Re:Yeah, didn't you see?

[TrekkieGod]

Funniest part from your article is how that person broke out of the coma:

...gradual recovery that began with him reacting to a six-figure doctor's bill.

Quite the opposite...

[sterno]

Actually I'd suggest the complete opposite, that desktop PC's are becoming pointless, not consoles. You go out and buy a console for $200-400 and you get a machine that can play a ton of games, might have some PVR capabilities, and graphics that, when new are pretty damn good.

Now, go get a PC to play games on. It'll cost you about $1000, then in two years you'll have to spend another $200-300 in upgrades to let you keep playing new games. Then another 2 years later you have to start over and spend another $1000. On the other hand, the PS2 has been around for, what, 3 years now, and it still has new games made for it today that aren't obviously suffering from the older hardware.

Furthermore, when you buy that game for the console, it works. That's it. Buy one for your PC, then you have to download Direct X 37.5.12 and the latest video drivers and sound drivers. But it turns out there's an odd bug that comes up because of the video card and sound card you have interacting with eachother in a funny way. Thus, whenever you start the game now, your shower turns on.

Desktop gaming will continue to be popular amongst the more hard core people who are willing to invest in top quality hardware. Otherwise, it is cheaper and substantially easier to just get one of these console game systems and be done with it.

only a risk if there are two possible outcomes

[frovingslosh]

What To Do If They Go Bankrupt

There is no gamble here. The question is stated wrong, it should be What To Do When They Go Bankrupt

Good point

[i_really_dont_care]

Why are they running Windows? [...] The only real plus I can see would be DirectX.

And even DirectX is implemented for Linux (check out Transgaming, they even have a free (at least as in beer) CVS version which works fairly well for many games).

But even if DirectX didn't exist on Linux, I don't see the advantages of using Windows. With all the libs out there, it is not a big issue to develop cross-platform apps and games nowadays (think Quake). The GPL is also a non-issue for user-space programs. Copy-protection could also work fairly well in user space (the DMCA will protect it anyway, and the recent crack for the X-Box has shown that hardware DRM won't really help in the long run). Software licensing costs would be zero, and the geek-factor would be quite high.

Re:Good point

[molarmass192]

Slow down there, what Transgaming has done is not DirectX for Linux. What they have done is DirectX enabled WINE. The closest thing to DirectX for Linux is SDL but even then it's not an easy port from a Windows app. What would be "fricken sweet" is a DirectX porting kit for Linux that would implement the DirectX API using SDL and/or OpenGL. Then porting a game to Linux would be a simple recompile and we might finally see more Linux ports. It's disappointing that the OpenGL group never expanded OpenGL into a full game development environment in the first place.

Re:Good point

[i_really_dont_care]

Slow down there, what Transgaming has done is not DirectX for Linux. What they have done is DirectX enabled WINE.

I don't see how this makes a difference. At the end Wine/DirectX is a portability layer just like OpenGL or SDL is.

The "porting kit" you mention is already there, too: It's called winelib and you can create normal Linux binaries without any dependencies with it.

Admittedly, this is not the same as "native" OpenGL, but then again I think OpenGL was developed as a research tool and not had games in mind in the first place.

Re:Good point

[molarmass192]

Not to beat a dead horse but since WINE and winelib use assumptions of x86 endianess extensively, they're not portable to non-x86 architectures like SDL and OpenGL are. I respect what Transgaming does (I'm a subscriber too) but that's not a porting kit any more than MAME is a porting kit. Granted, it allows you to run binaries on an emulation layer but there's no way you'd ever consider those binaries to be native ports. All that aside, I'm still disappointed that the OpenGL group didn't put together a gaming API. Regardless of whether they should have or not, the lack of that API is the primary reason why DirectX came to be. Right now it would be very difficult to argue that DirectX has not pushed OpenGL to the point of obsolesence on Windows as a result.

Broadband ISPs

[MImeKillEr]

This thing is supposed to work with broad-band ISPs. I can see TWC buying into this and offering it to existing customers, just like they do with the DVR.

The incentive for the customer would (potentially be) no need to purchase the hardware if TWC is going to supply it and charge a rental (like the DVR and cable boxes), the ease of having the rental costs rolled into their cable bill, and the cable companies having a local game server for the customers to play games on.

Sure, its running DRM-crippled XP, but whats the likelihood that a majority of cable customers will actually care?

It might not be the best business model (relying on TWC/Cox/etc to buy the units & then lease them) but it might actually work.

Of course, I don't know that they're actually going to get TWC/Cox/etc to buy into this, but anything that can increase profits for the cable companies will be seen as a possible must-have for them.

Personally, I signed up for the beta when the last article was posted. We'll see if anyone on /. gets one.. If anyone does, please let us know!

DivX, anyone?

[4eak]

I'm surprised no one mentioned this yet, but doesn't this remind anyone of DivX (not the codec) for video games?
I guess the key differences are
1. You don't buy any physical media.
2. So you have to download the data.

I mean, didn't DivX fail spectacularly enough to make it obvious that people, given the choice, would rather own a usable copy of the data they're paying for, instead of being subject to the whims/viability of the service provider?

A little business math

[fdicostanzo]

If this costs $400 plus $120/ year and you figure a 2 year life cycle, plus say 3 premium games/ year at (say) $10 each, thats $700 over two years.

I buy games at around $50 (or less) so that means 14 games on a normal PC. I presume that the buyers would have a PC as well (or you would have to figure the broadband costs into this as well)

Maybe I am out of the loop, but 14 games seems like a lot of games to purchase over 2 years and actually play for enough time to make worth it. Most of my games I buy a year out for $30 making it even less worth it to buy this system.

Of course, you don't have to pay to upgrade your PC to a r33t game machine...

DRM? Who cares

[Predius]

Everyone's getting all in a flutter 'cause DRM was mentioned. Who cares? If you want to copy software, use your pc and move on. This is just a dedicated box + Steam'esqe delivery. Personally I'm looking forward to it. My main grief with consoles is many games are only good for a short while. Sure, I could rent, but that adds up quickly. Give me a low cost subscription, and a large library, and I'll put up with delays while downloading a game quite happily. Do I give two !@#%s that there's DRM preventing me from using my PC to access the service? Nope. Wah, I can't rip the games off the box. This is akin to calling scrambled cable DRM and calling for a jihad against the cable companies for it.

Re: Incorporating the "????" step.

[pogle]

AMEN to that. Hate flash. Hates it, precious...

My roommate didnt understand my obsession with refusing to install it...stupid animations are most irritating.

OT: Web site complaint

[swordgeek]

This web site REQUIRES:

P-III
Netscape6 or IE5
Flash6

So not only have we hit the point where websites require flash (and the latest version, no less), but they're actually demanding a minimum processor to view?!!

I don't care if there's only one person left on the whole planet who has less than a P-III (which of course is nonsense--outside of the first world, the P-III is fairly rare, compared to the older machines). Excluding part of your target audience is a REALLY STUPID idea, especially when it's for no reason other than hype and flash.

Re:OT: Web site complaint

[thebigmacd]

I don't have a P3...works fine for me By require they mean recommend.

Actually people knwos well what's DRM.

[ihatesco]

DRM, even in forms that were different from today, always accompained commercial home software.

More recently DRM taken the form of software watermarking firmware, which has to be circumvented by "modchips" in order to play unmarked content. Even if Modchips are illegal (now), I really doubt that people will stop creating, importing, installing them and copying games. I can remember unlicensed software copying being "high" on demand in C64 days, in Amiga days, in SNES days, in PC days and it is still strong now, even with DMCA/EUCD and all the rest of WIPO shite.

Anyway, DRM is not the thing that people need to consider when they buy a console. People considers which console has decent (from a "psychological" standpoint) games at a good price. Of course consoles which get easily DRM-removal devices are sold better than consoles that don't, because software on the former costs less for the user.

Maybe people will not know what the "DRM"-yadda-yadda is with all the WIPO shite surrounding it ("every thing you buy a copied game, God kills a kitten... please, think of the kittens..."), but people knows that in order to play you have to pay more for the software.

If $WHATEVER doesn't get decent software for the price people want to pay, $WHATEVER is screwed. Nintendo 64 tells the lesson. Gamecube tells the lesson. X-Box tells the lesson.

Anyway, 10$ a month for a videogame for me is a decent price, even if it is "rented".

In all fairness

[phorm]

CD Audio is different from tape audio. I could agree with somebody making a copy of a CD to tape (quality down), or from tape to Mp3 (quality same/down), or from tape to CD...or tape to mp3, etc

However, if you own a tape, then really you should only be entitled to mp3's with tape quality or recorded from tapes. Same with CD's.
Not that I support the whole change-media-buy-anew... but I'd settle for this if we could eliminate all the rest of the anal-retentive RIAA war-tactics.

Copying between similar mediums is alright, but saying that one should be able to have an Mp3 just because they've got the song on an 8-track with a demagnetised tape is a little much.

Re:In all fairness

[program21]

One of the ideas the RIAA is trying to push is that when you buy a CD/tape/etc, you're really buying a license to play the music on that media. If we take this view, then unless this 'license' accounts for quality, then the buyer should be entitled to posses a copy of that album/track in any format with any quality, so long as it is the same song/album as the one they own on some other media.

Re:In all fairness

[phorm]

I think it accounts for quality. If movie producers thought the same way, would I be able to download divX for the old disneys I might have on the ol' film rolls? :-)

So what, same as XBox

[Performer Guy]

What's the difference between this and the XBox conceptually then? XBox is pretty much a PC, give or take the memory system.

How else would you build a console system affordably if you can't guarantee truly massive volume from the start?

Do you really expect them to put up hundreds of millions in R&D to do this all custom? What makes a console is the fact that every single system is identical to every other, it's a homogeneous platform that developers can write to, if software works on one it works on them all. It's about the critical mass and getting the titles, the console chicken & egg business is tough to enter, I wish them luck.

If they get the titles they need they'll be successful, and this is the attractive part of any console business, controlling the titles, and it's how they ALL do it. Same for Nintendo. You never saw people bitching that they couldn't program their N64, you need a cart and the carts were produced exclusively by Nintendo. Now it's CDs with authentication in hardware.

Break the business model (as some here are determined to do) and you don't get a cheap PC, you get a broken console business, ultimately they'll just go with some non standard format to stop you and drive the prices up.

When you buy one of these beasts you get it with DRM (of whatever flavor) built in. It's up front, "here's a console, it runs games published exclusively by us". Why anyone wuold buy into that relationship then gripe that they can't circumvent the DRM is beyond me. DON'T BUY IT, if you don't want it. Go buy that PC or whatever, they're nice & CHEAP these days and you don't have to waste your time hacking a console to make it work.

Din't read the article but...

[Anonymous Coward]

... what a great looking webpage!


ehh... yes, they'r still bad people!

Tried for beta test app.

[Stonent1]

But they want a copy of my resume? Strange...

no different than any other console...

[*weasel]

not really anyway.

microsoft doesn't want you copying Halo to your PC for an xbox rom any more than sony wants you burning a hacked SOCOM and running that to jack with network games. none of them want you copying zelda and passing it around. so they build in encryption measures.

sony has its own methods, nintendo has its, microsoft has its own. so what?

this is standard operating procedure for consoles. lock down the inputs as much as possible (while remaining cost effective), lock down the hardware as much as is reasonable to restrict its unanticipated use as you feel comfortable with, etc.

whether or not there's too much control here is up to people to decide with their wallets.

but no-one, certainly no-one here, should be surprised at DRM on a console. sheesh.

Re:no different than any other console...

[WebMasterJoe]

microsoft doesn't want you copying Halo to your PC for an xbox rom any more than sony wants you burning a hacked SOCOM and running that to jack with network games. none of them want you copying zelda and passing it around. so they build in encryption measures.

Ah, but the difference is when you buy SOCOM for your PS2, you don't have to keep paying for it every month. And they won't take your game away if you stop giving them money. And if you call me up and say you just bought a PS2, I can come over with my Vice City disc and let you borrow it. Hypothetically.

I look at what will happen when the service provider stops providing the service. This is the same problem that the RIAA-blessed online music services have been facing, aside from the whole rip-off-your-customers thing. People don't want to lose all the stuff they bought if the vendor goes under, or if they decide they don't want to buy from the vendor anymore. If Atari did this way back when, I wouldn't be able to fire up Galaga on my 7800 :) and I'm not being sarcastic, I really do play old video games sometimes. Even Pong. Think of the lack of historical records 200 years from now! They'll probably be able to see what Pac-Man was like, but they'll have a hard time playing games on a vintage Phantom machine.

Oh, what am I saying? They'll just hop in the time machine. 179 Space Credits for the first 500 years back, 2 SC/decade after that. Now there's a good business model.

They are competing with their OS supplier.

[David Gerard]

If this takes off, Microsoft will promptly eat their market and destroy them.

What's he smoking?

[Stonent1]

There's no reason Infinium Labs shouldn't get hundreds or thousands of game developers to sign up; if the developers offer their games through this service and no one buys, they lose nothing,

How about time? Money?? Porting games to a new console doesn't just occur with a ./configure && make && make install . You have to tune them to the hardware.

Oh?

[appleLaserWriter]

The Phantom Console will be among Worldcom's offerings?

Think of this from the reverse perspective

[nerph]

They mention in the article the parallels between this service and how we consume tv entertainment.

Well, how would you feel about driving to the store every Sunday to purchase a copy of the latest episode of your favourite tv show probably for $50 because it's not ad-supported. Then you could take it home and watch it on your PC whenever you felt like it. Let's face it who would shell out $400 for a tv that could only connect to prescribed cable/sattelite channels plus pay a monthly fee to watch ad-supported shows when you have this option? Does this seem like a feasible business model for tv shows?

So either (a) the two types of entertainment (games and tv shows) are not comparable or (b) they are comparable and their current business models are interchangeable.

You decide.

Re:Think of this from the reverse perspective

[gearheadsmp]

I've decided I'd rather be paying $50 for a game that offers >40 hours of entertainment (Neverwinter Nights or Half Life 2) than to pay $50 to watch an episode of CSI that lasts less than 1 hour.

Re:Think of this from the reverse perspective

[WebMasterJoe]

I have bought seasons of TV shows, partly because they're higher quality, partly for the extra content, and partly to skip commercials. Well scratch that last one for the Sopranos, but I have no problem buying Simpsons seasons on DVD.

I doubt that selling seasons on DVD is a feasable business model if that were the only way they were released, but when you figure the shows were already produced, the cost of producing a DVD is significantly lower, which means they don't need to sell as many copies, and they'll still make a profit. It's called a blended offering. I think. Maybe not.

This system is in almost the same boat, just reversed a bit. If game developers have a product you can buy at EB, it's not going to cost them much to make it available through this system (aside from porting, if they don't have a PC version). Will they? It depends on the price model. The developers won't bother if the subscription model isn't attractive enough to consumers, and they won't bother if they think the cost of participation is higher than they can expect to get back, figuring in the fact that if somebody subscribes to a game on the Phantom system, they quite likely won't be buying the box at retail. Phanotm profits will have to be predominantly new customers, so as to not cut down on profits. I honestly don't know what will happen, but I'm going to be pessimistic and guess that they will fail before they can make a noticeable entry into the market.

The Phantom Console gets a name...

[CommieLib]

The DivX-Box. Thank you ladies and gentlemen, I'll be here all week.

zerg

[Lord Omlette]

The sooner they release it, the sooner these guys will get their hands on it. Then we can all (ok, the few people who actually do buy it) say, "bye bye" to their encryption...

hmmm

[geekoid]

"...no way to get data on or off of it except through a dedicated connection to Infinium Labs' own servers..."

I got a screw driver and metal snips, and I'm not afraid to use them!

Damn

[mlerner]

Is it too late to cancel my beta application form?

Like cable TV?

[PhoenixOne]

[quote]Yeah, casual gamers are going to plop down $400 on a console that requires a $10 a month service fee to play games that you have to purchase separately.[end quote]

Just like nobody would plop down $300-$6000 on a TV and then spend $20-$60 a month to watch stuff on it. ;)

Phantom is not competing with XBox/PS2/GameCube or even the PC. I think Phantom wants to be your next cable-entertainment station. After seeing what "Must See" TV has to offer, I wish them the best of luck.

Re:Like cable TV?

[Jason Earl]

My point was that if a "casual gamer" can't be enticed to buy $150 Gamecube then it is not likely that said "casual gamer" will drop $400 + $10/month for a Phantom. Especially considering that the Gamecube is basically guaranteed to have a whole pile of killer exclusive games, while the Phantom will be lucky to get PC retreads that you have actually heard of.

Wait...

[baximus]

So it's a DRM-protected, standard PC running Windows? Isn't that an Xbox? :/

Re:Wait...

[gearheadsmp]

At least with the Xbox you can let your friends borrow the games. And you can use it without fear of getting sued by someone so paranoid that they put a paragraph of legal threats on the "You can't access this server directory" page of their server just for trying to view their /images directory.

Actually...

[Anonymous Coward]

I also find Acidic Diarrhea far less annoying than someone that starts a post with "Umm...".

Re:Actually...

[Anonymous Coward]

Annoying, maybe not. Classy? Definately not. Its pretty hypocritical for somebody that calls himself Acidic_Diarrhea to tell somebody that they don't have any class...

Business model?

[DrRobert]

Is this not the DIVX business model exactly? That worked real well....

Not a good example

[SuperKendall]

The XBox version of Enter The Matrix had better textures and supported a higher resolution than the other consoles - it almost, but not quite, made me go get an XBox just to play the thing in HDTV resolutions! So I think the numbers for the sales of that game would be skewed to favor the XBox significantly.

Even so, I think the XBox is number two in sales, though I don't know how close the Gamecube is. As shown by the game tally I guess the PS2 is far off in the distance maintaining a gigantic lead.

Re:Fair use? (Doggie Rights Mgmt)

[ChuyMatt]

That analogy is downright WEIRD!!!

what the HECK is wrong with you WARPED mind?!?!

meh! ... doggie treats...

Re:crafted? created?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you spend a little too much time listening to RMS. You don't copyright information. That is not possible. It is actually very clearly state on the Copyright website [copyright.gov] -

You cannot copyright..."Works consisting entirely of information that is common property and containing no original authorship."

You can copyright your tangible analysis of information as long as it contains thoughts and ideas that are your own.

As for the money issue, copyright was created entirely with the idea of providing a living for people who create works of art and science.

Finally, I have created many works of art. I even consider this post to be a work of art. I find it very unlikely, however, that somebody in this universe is creating the same exact thing at the same exact time.

Think Long Term and Target Market

[PetoskeyGuy]

I think many game development companies would be very interested in this if they can pull it off. Most of the profit to be made on a game is in the first few weeks after release. After that sales drop off incredibly. This is just another marketing channel.

They could sell their game for $40 all at once, or rent it to people for $5/month. So they get the same amount of money back in 8 months - and maybe more if people keep playing. The number of people who would pay $5 for a game to try it could make them lots more money the number about who would pay $40 to own it.

It's like buying a house. I won't/can't spend $200,000 up front, but I can pay $750 / month. Over the course of the loan I end up paying probably double what I would have if I paid all at once, but it's at a cash flow I can handle.

They will probably go after the Total Cost of Ownership like MS has been tossing around lately. A Console for $200 + 6 games @ $30 each may end up costing just about the same as this machine. If you could have a console with 20 or 30 games for the same price, it would easily win families over. Toss in a Netflix like N games at a time plan charged through your broadband utility company and it could be a big winner.

Simpsons Quote?

[PetoskeyGuy]

From Ininium Labs Careers page.

Ininium Labs' Employees Work Hard and Play Hard...

Homer Phobia?

Dollars vs. units; ESRB ratings

[yerricde]

The sales of a widely publicized, all-platform title definitely bear some relation to the market situation.

The Xbox's exclusive titles tend toward "T" and "M" ratings, while the GameCube's tend toward "E" (and mild "T" such as Super Smash Bros. Melee). I'm guessing that because of this, more families with under-13 children have a GameCube than have an Xbox. Isn't Enter the Matrix rated M?

month-by-month, the US dollar share of the market of the Xbox is rising, and that of the Gamecube is diminishing.

Only because the Xbox plus a game costs much more than $150 (the current US price for a GameCube plus a game). Dollar market share is based on number of units sold times the price of goods. I don't feel that how much money was spent on the system (dollar market share) is as important as how many households the system is in (unit market share).

No matter what slight edge the Xbox may have over the GameCube in Europe and White America, the GameCube is still whipping the Xbox's butt in Japan. There, the Xbox is neck and neck with the PSone, for cricket's sake!

Re:Dollars vs. units; ESRB ratings

[Anonymous Coward]

Who cares about sales in Japan? I live in the US and that is what is important to me. Just because some anime inspired Final Fantasy game convinces people to buy a PS2 over an Xbox in Japan doesn't mean shit to me. I am content with being a US citizen buying games for a US Xbox.

All this love for Japan is getting a little old.

What if games that run on your PC are out of print

[yerricde]

Most of the older action games for PC are difficult to impossible to obtain lawfully because they have been phased out of print in favor of new releases that require "an uber-l337 gaming PC" as you put it.

Yeah Right...

[inkless1]

I tried to sign up for their beta until I realized they couldn't even get a mailto: form to work correctly - something my old *boss* figured out on his own. You think I'm letting these geniuses anywhere near my network?

MOD PARENT UP!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is some insightful schiza!

It's heart

[panxerox]

If the machine's base unit is a General purpose pc it will be hacked.

Phantom Coffee

[spector30]

If this console is anything like their promotional products (try the link, it says their store has either been moved or deleted) it will surely live up to its vaoporous name. I was looking at getting at least a coffee mug because I liked their logo. Oh well, I guess it's off to ThinkGeek for something that's at least for real.

Couldn't they think of a better name?

[danila]

Calling your product Phantom doesn't exactly inspire confidence in customers and investors, does it really? The only worse thing I can think about right now would be opening calling it VaporStation (tm) or BS-box (tm). :-)

Phantom eh?

[AvengerXP]

I dont need another crippled PC that will serve as a console. I already have this huge paperweight here that's called an XBox, it has a total of 5 interesting games approximately, and out of those 2 or 3 are ports from other consoles/PC from a year before. No more consoles, thanks. It's called saturated market.

Re:DRM? Who cares

[forkboy]

This might be what you're looking for.

heh

[dmszero]

umm, the packets have to go somewhere dont they? like through my firewall.. which means we can get a pretty damn good look at what it does how it does (assuming it isnt vapour).

so how long do they really think they can operate before someone provides a 3rd party server? what was that? the sound of a business model rapidly evaporating? its like providing a deadlock, and paying for a guy to stand there beside your door with a fist full of silly putty asking you for a key impression.

dms0

What would stop...

[56ksucks]

... a hacker from writing software to download these games on a regular PC and save / play them? Once they're downloaded on a regular PC they can be distrubuted as easily as an mp3. Why buy the console when in a few months a genious hacker will make the games free to download?

here's an idea

[56ksucks]

This is the second crippled Windows PC turned game console on the market. Why don't we, the geek community, develope a game machine that runs on Linux. And since Linux can be ported to anything, who's to say it has to be a crippled PC? Anything that will boot Linux will do. And here's the catch. The games.. are open source! We could call it the *nix-Box

Re:Look at track 21!

[Billly Gates]

That album is an artistic masterpiece of great proportions. Infact track 21 on that cd even has its own video because of its sound greatness of music lovers!

Re:Look at track 21!

[Scaba]

Don't you just love those mod-a-go-go, sweatswirt wearin', psychedelic hobbit chicks?

No.

[Inoshiro]

If you did, you'd have an Xbox and Xbox Live! for the online games, such as Mech Assault, Tetris Worlds, Soldier of Fortune, Midtown Madness, Unreal, etc, etc.

Hardcore gamers will have an Xbox for those reasons alone!

Re:No.

[Darren Winsper]

Mech Assault's crap, Midtown Madness isn't that great, SoF and Unreal Tournament2003 are far better played on a PC. I wouldn't exactly call Tetris Worlds a good reason for an XBox.

This is an omen.

[UnixRevolution]

Usually i see people argue both sides of something on /., from Windows to DRM to whatever...

But it seems everyone here has a reason (or 12) not to buy a Phantom.

This does not bode well for the Phantom's manufacturers. At least they chose an appropriate name.

Looks like a mailing-list farm for enthusiasts...

[www.sharkdefense.com]

....nice looking website, but it looks like they're just looking to create a new mailing list and hiding it as a Beta-test signup. Then they can sell it off to someone. Maybe the box is vaporware, since the business model of this unit couldn't possibly work. Buy the unit, download the games, company goes out of business and then what?

Also, how many beta-testers should have to give their CELL-PHONE on an application?

Shesh.

www.sharkdefense.com

Nippon

[yerricde]

Just because some anime inspired Final Fantasy game

Squaresoft is not the only Japanese developer of popular console games. Ever heard of Konami? Capcom? Nintendo?

I am content with being a US citizen buying games for a US Xbox.

If you only get US games, you're missing out because apparently, the Japanese designers tend to know how to create fun for all ages without gratuitous gore.

Bzzt.

[Inoshiro]

Mech Assault is awesome arcade action with MechWarrior mechs. No need to spend 20 minutes configuring a payload: you just lock and load, in battles where you can get a kill every 20 to 40 seconds (assuming you're good). It's slower than Unreal (which is a lot of walk a beat, shoot what moves), and still very satisfying.

Tetris Worlds online is very good, because the Tetris game it has is supperior to The Next Tetris: Online Edition released for Dreamcast a couple of years back. In addition to the better Tetris mode, it has the best Live! menu support I've seen in a Live! game yet.

The Xbox also has great offline games: DOA3, Gunvalkyrie, Jet Set Radio Future (the game I bought an Xbox for), Panzer Dragoon, Sega GT 2002, Splinter Cell, Shenmue 2x, Toe-Jam and Earl 3, etc.

Seriously, if you'd open your mind, you'd see the benefits of being polyamorous to your platforms.