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.
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
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.
Space for rent, inquire within
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
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
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...
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