Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
What with Media PCs picking up acceptance, I wouldn't be surprised to see a game/network/PVR combo soon.
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?
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Schnapple
But the real question is, when does a purchase cease being your personal property?
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.
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.
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.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
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?
You were 80% angel, 10% demon. The rest was hard to explain. - Over The Rhine
"Math in a song is good."-Linford
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.
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.
Melius mori in libertate quam vivere in servitute.
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.
Un-news
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.
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.
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
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.
Melius mori in libertate quam vivere in servitute.
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.
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.
I tried every decent and legal way I could think of to resolve the issue w/the business before I rented the chicken suit
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.