Phantom Shows Pictures, Pricing, Huang Hire

HawKe writes "Audioholics reports today on details of Infinium Labs' new Phantom Gaming Service which is to be unveiled at this year's E3 in Los Angeles. The service looks to be geared towards a wider demographic rather than the hard core gamer, but for the price of included Phantom hardware (basically free) it appears to be a good compromise - the article explains the PC 'console' is 'free of charge to consumers who sign a two-year contract for a basic subscription to its flagship online gaming service at $29.95 per month. Consumers can also opt to buy this advanced gaming 'receiver' and required accessories without a commitment for $199'." S!: GameDaily also has a feature interviewing Infinium's Kevin Bachus, in which it's confirmed: "Infinium is concerned about protecting its IP and its consumers. To that end, Bachus and Infinium have hired Andrew Huang, the MIT grad student who gained fame for hacking the Xbox."

Comments

Concerned indeed...

[Tom7]

Infinium is concerned about protecting its IP and its consumers.

Right... those mod chips have a way of crawling into your home and installing themselves, ruining your valuable data. Better protect the consumers!

price

[kc78]

so this free console winds up costing me 718 dollars in the long run. Yeah, I'm all over that.

Parts?

[Anonymous Coward]

With those specs if it's cheap enough, why not just strip it for parts?
-Stu

Re:Hmm...

[fireduck]

will any game be available on it? There's 3 different "informative" links in this story; 2 going to interviews. Not 1 mentions a single game title. You get a bunch of free titles when you buy it with "support [for] all current and future Windows-based titles" in the future. Yeah, that's real promising. A game system where they can't even name a single game. Not even a "support for such games as Half-Life, Quake, Warcraft 2, or Spider Solitaire". Granted, they've got lots of time to announce games, but if you want to generate hype, it's all about games, games, games (particularly when all you're selling is a pc clone)

Safe Harbor Statement?

[Anonymous Coward]

Look whats at the bottom, I mean, how professional is this?

Safe Harbor Statement
Certain statements included in this press release may constitute forward-looking statements. Actual results could differ materially from such statements expressed or implied herein as a result of a variety of factors including, but not limited to: the development of the Infinium Labs technology, the successful marketing and distribution of the Phantom Gaming System, acceptance by the market of Infinium Labs, products and technology, competition and timing of projects and trends in the gaming industry, as well as other factors expressed from time to time in filings Infinium Labs will make with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC"). As a result, this press release should be read in conjunction with periodic filings Infinium Labs makes with the SEC. The forward looking statements contained herein are made only as of the date of this press release, and Infinium Labs undertakes no obligation to publicly update such forward looking statements to reflect subsequent events or circumstances.

Anyways... those pictures look pretty manipulated, can't really say why. The lighting is way the hell too bright for one. And also, whats with that ONE cable on the front? First, it looks like it is in a different place in each of the pictures. Also, are they intending to sell a one controller console? I understand its for PC games, but even the XBOX has like 4 controllers.

Now, lets humor the guy for a moment, and ignore the past terrible PR, lack of evidence of a product, bandwidth costs for this guy to stream whole games, etc. Who would spend $30 a month for two years to rent a console? Thats $720! You could buy an XBOX, Gamecube, and PS2 for that price, and still have money for some games.

Re:Safe Harbor Statement?

[Torgo's Pizza]

>Derr. They had it profesionally photographed. Actually, professionally Photoshopped. Look at the metadata for the jpgs and you'll see they were at the very least cleaned up in PS 7.0.

As for the money, technically you're right. Get past the press release and FUD, you're paying $720 to get a free console. So what you're really paying is ~$22 rather than $30. That subscription fee is paying for access to the network and some free games. You're forgetting that there are premium games that cost extra. That Doom 3 release isn't going to be part of the subscription fee. It's going to cost you extra.

So yeah, if you're into Tetris or solitare or Yahoo! Games, those games are part of the $30 package. The Unreal Tournaments, Doom3 and Half-Live 2 games are going to be quite a bit more... on increasingly dated hardware. Those savings are quickly disappearing.

Marketing, marketing, marketing!

[Mean_Nishka]

I think if there's any lesson to be had in the gaming business it all comes back to marketing.

Case in point: Sega and Nintendo.

Here we had two of the largest video game manufacturers on the planet, who were literally spanked by Sony who spent gobs of cash to make their Playstations a success. PS2 hardware is inferior to that of the Gamecube and Xbox, although it has consistently outsold their competition quarter after quarter.

If Phantom hopes to be successful, they will need to spend millions to get the word out. Even 'giving' the machine away may not stem the tide of the traditional consoles with multi million dollar marketing efforts.

Lastly, I'm worried about their software distribution method. Most people don't have broadband connections, and those that do don't have a home network. If there is no built support for 802.11 wireless many will balk at the thought of having to wire their home just to play games.

Re:Marketing, marketing, marketing!

[filth grinder]

Here we had two of the largest video game manufacturers on the planet, who were literally spanked by Sony who spent gobs of cash to make their Playstations a success. PS2 hardware is inferior to that of the Gamecube and Xbox, although it has consistently outsold their competition quarter after quarter

The PS2 hardware is also alot older than both the gamecube and the xbox. It came out first. The reason why it continues to sell so much isn't marketing. When was the last time you saw a comerical for a PS2? The reason why the console sells is because of games. It has a HUGE library of games. People still buy the inferior product because it has the games people want.

The only marketing the PS2 gets is from all the games that continue to come out for it. That is the lesson to be learned here. Marketing will not make the system. Games will. If the system comes out with a mess of games, games that people want to play, then it will be a success.

Let's see, satellite TV, game consoles, etc...

[stienman]

Let's look at this carefully. Has a consumer product yet emerged which did not work without a service charge, yet was not hacked?

The article mentions that the company is most worried of spoofing identities. Well, they'd better be. If they want the console and service to succeed they must provide one click shopping for games an apps, with either try before you buy, or some sort of 'dissatisfied' cancel in a few hours after purchase return.

This means that once someone has another person's id/password/encrypted key or whatever, then they can purchase games in another's name while having charges applied to the other person.

I believe that within 3 months of wide availability this will be hacked so you can modify the machine without the service knowing, possibly spoofing IDs. Within a year someone will have the service connected to and running on a regular PC.

And, of course, they'll find out that it runs Linux since MS isn't going to license windows to an xbox competitor at low rates. (ie, they'll use windows, but it'll be so expensive that they'll fail financially)

-Adam

Brilliant Strategy, But Pathetically Transparent

[shadowcabbit]

Hiring Huang as a security advisor means that this "free" computer will be harder to hack into a general purpose machine than an Xbox, that's all. I give it six months-- that is, running under the sickeningly optimistic assumption that the Phantom even gets made.

Can we get some confirmation that Huang was actually hired? Specifically from Huang himself? Infinium has a habit of lying about who they're associated with, you know.

Phantom: For the Easycore?

[superultra]

The service looks to be geared towards a wider demographic rather than the hard core gamer

Naturally, Infinium has been hyping their pursuit of the easycore (anti-hardcore) because that's supposedly where the money is, or at least according to possible investors. So, just how easycore is the Phantom in comparison to other consoles?

* Requires broadband. Hmm, well, broadband is certainly more proliferated than ever, but in regards to gaming it's still considered an element of the hardcore. I think it's safe to say that Xbox Live is doing well for an online service, but according to most publishers online gameplay is still cutting edge, and therefore hardcore. So, broadband alienates a lot of users. What's more: how many easycore people have a cat5 hookup in their living room? Is the Phantom going to support wireless? Do you see how more involved this is becoming?

* Keyboard and mouse control. I think it's fairly safe to say that the easycore far prefer a controller to a mouse and keyboard. And yet the latest renderings have no controller at all. If a user of the phantom is willing to use a mouse and keyboard to play FPS games, why not play it on their PC? Again, this is not catering to the easycore, the mouse and keyboard is definitively hardcore.

* Price. $30 a month? So, the easycore are already paying $30-50 for broadband. Probably $30-90 for cable/satellite, which I mention because it's an entertainment expense. So why would any easycore person pay $30 just to own the phantom and play freeware games? The Phantom subscription fee does not include the games, which themselves will be $40-50. Xbox Live is what, $60 for 12 months? $30 a month is a hardcore price, perhaps even more so because you really don't get anything for it. Even just paying the $200 means you get a machine that people have not coded specifically for. In other words, a game coded specifically for the Xbox, if done well, looks better than a game coded for a PC of the Phantom's specs for obvious reasons. So, why the Phantom again?

I could go on, but I have better things to do than talk about the Phantom. Feel free to add.

The linguistics used by Infinium that seem to cuddle up to the casual gamer are a farce. There's no centralized design here to that end. Gamecubes are for the casual gamer more than any other console, and there is nothing in here that is Apple or Nintendo-esque. The Phantom is just that, a constantly morphing mismatch of ideas piecemealed together from different people and different gaming idealogies, if you can even call them gaming idealogies. Practically, the Phantom is, judging by their choice of words and marketing, little more than an attempt to raise investor monies. It is not a gaming machine but a perceived cash cow for Infinium.

Re:Yay, a limited PC.

[NanoGator]

"It sounds less and less like a good deal when you add it up over time. "

It sounds less and less like a good deal when you make an attempt to find problems where there, at the moment, are none. Really, the value of it won't be determined until launch. In the mean time, being skeptical isn't being particularly helpful.

download speeds?

[WormholeFiend]

compare the size of today's multi-CD games, and how long it takes to download even a cd-romful of ~700mb...

at least a couple of hours at optimal connection speeds on excellent high-bandwidth servers.

now add to the fact that a lot of gamers dislike even the loading times of games that are already installed on their machines...

I dont know about you guys, but me, I'll believe they can pull it off after they do it, when I can see it.

Re:Guaranteed failure

[DirkDaring]

You got that right. Plus -- do they really think I'm going to wait 8-10 hours to play a new game for the huge download?