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.
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?
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
So it's like an Xbox (Really a PC)but you have to download all yours games...
Everyone that disagrees with me is a paid shill
Yet.
sulli
RTFJ.
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.
Boromir, son of Faramir, King of Gondor and Minas Tirith
I predict only phantom sales for this ... thing.
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!
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.
Bethanie: Whore...
Fan Whore
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?
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.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
When was the last time you checked? Been away for a while?
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
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.
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.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
*gloat gloat gloat*
"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.
"Derp de derp."
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".
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
Yeah, sign me up!
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.
"The words of the prophets are written on the Slashdot walls."
Once again, the DRM world prepares to provide the smart-people-with-spare-time world with more amusement. Woo-Hoo!!
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.
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.
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?
The cancel button is your friend. Do not hesitate to use it.
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).
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.
--- I'm Green Hornet's sidekick not Inspector Clouseau's!
"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
--an unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys--
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.
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.
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?
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
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.
You aren't free to do anything, until you've lost everything.
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.
R: That voice. Where have I heard that voice before? B: In about 365 other episodes. But I don't know who it is either.
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.
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.)