Slashdot Mirror
Infinium Labs Threatens Gaming News Site
Over the past year or two, Slashdot has run a number of stories about Infinium Labs and their Phantom Game Console (that phrase still makes me smile, every time). I think we've been generous to them, taking their game console talk at more or less face value, despite the vaporous nature of the product. Now they've decided that threats are a better plan for improving their image than producing a real product, and threatened HardOCP over an older news story. Our own Robin Miller has talked to Infinium and written up his impressions of the situation.
What, are they gonna sue Penny Arcade too?
Dude, Whoa
I Hate The Stupid Phantom
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Sue a well known gaming website.
/Guinness beer dude
BRILLIANT!
The next step in their buisness plan is perhaps to do a SCO
How about suing another console vendor for $1 Billion for infringing on IP in their vaporware console?
I preemptively named my software company The Vapour Software Company, so that when people read articles about my late products they just think the writer is mentioning the name of my company again and again. The later my producs, the better the free advertising!
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
This will be the first console that will have a port of Duke Nukem Forever.
Lackey: Sir, we're not catching enough flies!
President: Very well. Activate the Vinegar Device!
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Step 1: Alienate your potential customer base by threatening to sue anyone who says anything bad about you. And make sure to get as much bad press as possible, before the product is even released.
Step 2: ???
Step 3: Profit!
um, like SCO? what customers?
Anyone else here want to short this publicly traded turkey?
SCO announced today in a press release that they have acquired ownership of Infinium Labs and all rights to the Phantom game console.
In news related to this related news, legal procedings have been initiated against Slashdot, Penny Arcade, and the chick who used to work for Infinium who said something on Slashdot.
Why should I argue rationally with someone being irrational? I'll just mock them instead.
$1,250,100.
Is it just me, or is anyone else wondering about that $100? I mean, $1.25 million is a nice, round number. Easy to remember and deal with, but that $100 extra is some sort of ugly wart at the end.
What is it? A birdbath? Prettier shingles? What honestly adjusts the price of a house by $100?!
----- ----- -----
I'm an annoying punter but wouldn't it be smarter for Infinium to actually demo one of these consoles...
The Phantom console is real. It was demoed at CES. Penny Arcade, HardOCP, and other so-called "news sites" are slandering the company. I don't need to tell you how poor of an "editor" Michael Sims is for publishing such a biased article on Slashdot.
Sincerely,
Seth Finklestein
Game Industry Maven
I'm not Seth Finkelstein. I still speak the truth.
Nobody ever told me that I'm a nerd before. Oh well....
[ Don't reply to this ]
Just covering my bases...I hate lawyer letters...
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Is it just me or has their website vaporized as well?
The console must also double as a server.
-ashot
anyone else find it humorous that the lawyers who wrote the threat letter are at www.mofo.com ?
Do they realize that by doing stuff like this they are making an enemy out of thousands of potential buyers? While the NERD army is not as prestigous as the KISS army, we can fight it out with the best of them.
we could re-name the title of this story to something like:
SCO's lawyers take break from hell to perform pro-bono work for Infinium
After all, Bachus is a seasoned pro [...] in an interview with gamesindustry.biz published January 29, 2004, he said, "I plan to be working in this industry, hopefully at Infinium but if not then somewhere else, for a long time, and ultimately all I have is my credibility."
What, no skill, talent, experience, vision, morality or integrity? That damn journalist must have cut those bits out to save on his word count.
(though, to be fair - from a slashdot editor, I would have expected : 'All I have is my credibilty, and my credibility').
I thought this kind of behavior was reserved for companies that could afford to lose customers or that had an existing customer base.
They already have 25 million units sold, and they're moving more all the time.
-- dR.fuZZo
an "Infinium Phantom Console" PC case modding contest. ;-)
Just think if you can fool a few rich people or companies, you too can live in a 3 million dollar home and not have to do any real work!!!!
Scam #1: Start a business in a hot area, get a few componies interested in your idea's. Get investers interested in your company, but telling them how companies are dying to buy your new product. Then sale the company before people realies there is no product and it starts fold.
Scam #2: Tell investers you have a new product idea for a hot market, get them to invest lot's of money. Then pay yourself an outragous salary, until you have used up all the investment. Then say you were a victem of a tough market.
Wise men speak because they have something to say, Fools because they have to say something!!!!
They advertise a fast AMD Athlon XP 3200+ processor on a high speed Intel motherboard. Man, I would have liked that back with my Athlon 1.2 GHz. That VIA chipset sucked, everyone knows Intel makes the best chipsets!
Holy cow! Someone used libel and liable both correctly and both in the same post.
You just made my morning.
The only thing that [REDACTED] gets out of this is publicity. Over and over they have proved to have absolutely nothing: no offices, no capital, no product, no sense.
I would suggest that we cease and desist with ANY discussion of non-existant companies suing over non-existant damage arising out of non-existant product. Therefore HardOCP, Slashdot, et al should simply remove all references to [REDACTED] and their alleged console the [REDACTED].
It's the only way to ensure that such sites aren't the victims of spurious legal action. Else they'd be accessories to fraud for perpetuating information about things that don't exist.
Nicholas Eckert
vidstudent
Anyone trashing Infinium here has not bothered to try out Infiniums offerings themselves. If you lazy asses would go to their web site you'd see that they have produced many great things already, including a really cool logo, an Acrobat PDF file with cool graphics embedded in it, and a kick-ass schweeet streaming video file that has techno beats, flashy words and graphics flying all over the screen, I was was like "Whoa! That logo is cool!" I want to upgrade my connection to T3 so I can download the bigger versions of the promotional versions, and here them in Dolby Surround!
The problem with most lame-ass gamers these days is everyone expects to go to the store and buy a plastic box and you bring it home and plug it in and "play with it", as if pushing buttons and controllling things on the screen really matters. Well that's old thinking. Now days we don't have to hold a gaming system in our hands to appreciate it. We can just download a promotional video clips (that are all free by the way, why pay for games when promotional videos are free?) and it shows you what the system would look like, that is if you wanted a plastic box taking space in your home, but we don't have to actually hold it and play it, do we? No!
Infinium is taking the next bold step into "non-interactive promotional gaming" and all of you are just screwing around wasting money on your Pac-Man ancient history non-promotional I-have-to-hold-it-in-my-hands gaming systems. Losers! All of you! I'm never reading Slashdot again, at least not until I come back to work on Monday, I swear, all weekend no Slashdot!
According to Phantom.net, the "creed comes to life March 31st 2004 at our Phantom online store where customers can customize their own Phantom Gaming Service to meet their individual needs." They go on to refer to March 31st 2004 as the "e-commerce launch" ROTFLMAO!!!!
There website reads like a vaporware/dot.bomb parody. Oh PLEEEASE let me submit my credit card information to the "Phantom Online Store"!
This one gang kept wanting me to join cause I'm pretty good with a bo staff.
do you think you really need to ASK for an oppinion from slashdot ANALs?
Actually, a search on Google (not Googlenews) turns up (at sfpoetry.org/other.html):
LYSSA WATSON is thirteen years old and has dreamed of being published since she was seven years old.
So, you have crushed the dreams of a 13 year old who has wanted to be published since she is 7. You bastard.
Yes, he is aware of that. He is not here for the post, he is here for the google crawler, as his subject line indicates. He wants google to find the link between terms like "Worst" and "Homosexual" and Penny Arcade. Unfortunately, he is not a particularly skilled google bomber, and apparently does not realize that he is meanwhile increasing the value of significantly more realistic search terms like "Comic" to Penny Arcade.
I grant "google bombing n00b" awards to both of you. Congratulations.
MoFo: The Phantom Menace
Beauty is in the eye of the beerholder.
Who knew
www.mofo.com as their web site address?
What will those whacky legal professionals come up with next?
Reason why there is hope for the future generation #364:
"I wish my grass was emo so it could cut itself."
You gave me an idea. 3D Realms(DNF) can claim that Vaporware is their intellectual property and sue Infinium for infringing on that.
And yes, it was expensive, but worth it. Price is no object so I ordered the "top of the line" model complete with a Bitboys video card and I even get a certificate to take to the store and pick up my copy of Duke Nukem Forever!! I WIN !
Wow - I want one of them "Pahntom Wall Clock[s]"
Infinium's law firm is called MoFo. That just about sums everything up nicely.
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
Why the hell does Infinium labs care now, five months later?
It's hard to access the internet when you don't have any offices.
I give up. I can't tell the litigious bastards without a scorecard anymore.
Okay, someone clue me in. Which litigious bastards are we supposed to be angry at now?
These litigious bastards ... ...
these other litigious bastards...
now these litigious bastards
or perhaps (and oldie but a goodie) these litigious bastards
Man, that's going to be an awful lot of HREFs to compile in my posts to talk about anybody on Slashdot anymore.
Karma: Frotzed (mostly due to the Frobozz Magic Karma Company)
"hmmm... We have this console, which has been running for two years, 25 million dollars in venture capital, offices on both coasts, 60 onboard developers, and boxes and boxes of beta units just ready to go, but people still think we're vaporware. How do we let gamers know that we have a real product ready to sell for the 2004 christmas season?"
"I know! Let's sue a journalist!"
"No, no. Too harsh. All people want is a solid, physical unit shipped to a news magazine like IGN for their inspection. Why don't we take one of those thousands of beta units we have in the warehouse, load it up with Metroid Prime like in the screenshots, and ship it to IGN with a mockup console hacked out over the weekend in Flash? We could easily hook it into our existing nationwide network of game servers we had to put up for our Beta."
"I really think you should consider the 'suing a journalist' option."
"Is that really the best way to leverage our company's assets? What if we just threatened to sue?"
"It is a proportionate response. No journalist worth their salt would imperil their career by standing up to a threat to sue. By being benevolent and just threatening to sue, people will know you have weight behind your claims."
"How's the mansion Bob?"
"Great. Yours Frank?"
"Peachy Keen."
The ______ Agenda
The article is a really good read, btw. What is wrong with this firm? No, wait, don't answer that.
God Bless America. Why? Did it sneeze?
Not saying your wrong at all.I just dont know (nor do I much care really)
But Mr/Mrs/Miss AC, how is it you know Infiniums employment history? I looked on google and found no evidence of any Mr/Mrs/Miss Anonymous Coward ever having been employed by Infinium.
I checked slashdot and found that you have mostly been responsible for a great number of missinformed posts, flaimes,and even a decent number of outright lies.
I think you underestimate just how much I just dont care.