Slashdot Mirror
Can Infinium Compete In The Game Console Market?
Joe Barr writes "IT Manager's Journal is running a story this morning by Robin Miller and Matt Moen on Infinium Labs, the controversial game console maker. The long promised console finally appears to be a reality, but there are serious questions about Infinium's longterm viability in the game console market. ITMJ, like Slashdot, is part of OSTG."
Capitalism is the perfect system that fits human nature -- human nature is competition.
Sez you.
I say human nature is cooperation. And, hey, look, I presnted just as much evidence as you did.
Nice things are nicer than nasty ones.
Basically, it is sad. How childish from kyle, even with all his problems with infinium, to do that. And who cares "about the internals of what the Phantom REALLY has". That misses the point so much that is isn't even funny.
I mean, the article is already ridiculous:
"The box, while cute, is essentially a mid-range PC without a CD drive " --- stupid comment. It doesn't have a scanner either. Nor a printer.
Then, there is the controller, which is:
"perfect for computing (or gaming) with your feet up or lounging on a sofa instead of sitting rigidly in front of a desk"
--- so yes, the phantom is not a PC, it is a console.
"If Infinium fails to sell many subscriptions, it will go out of business. If it sells a whole bunch, it will be heavily in debt. This is the problem faced by any company that needs to put out substantial amounts of money in front in order to generate long-term income. "
--- sure. Same for TiVO. That's the point with subscription based services bunling hardware.
"Also note that $50 million is enough to get about 138,000 subscribers going, assuming no investors who have already put money into Infinium demand a piece of this pie, and that the Operations Cash Fairy suddenly comes down from fairyland to pay all the company's operating expenses during its first year or two of full business activity. But eventually investors will want their money, the Operations Cash Fairy will run off with the Easter Bunny to Never-Never Land, and "up to $50 million" may turn out to be $42 million or $3 million or some other number between $0 million and $50 million, with the exact amount depending on the whims of the investing public and the country's general economic condition at the moment the shares are offered"
--- okay. This is stupid on so many level, that it is hard to start. First, this is not journalist. It is a rant. Second, investro can't "demand a piece of the pie" to a company that is not public and is heavily in debt. Third, if Infinium is too successfull and heavily in debt, it will have zero problem raising money.
"If Infinium delivered streaming games without the Phantom box and charged $14.95 per month for a base subscription, its only upfront cost per subscriber would be sales commissions and distribution costs for whatever piece of custom software it used to run its games on clients' computers."
--- This, coming from a slasdot founder is really funny. Rob don't understand anything about making money. Selling games subscription to PC will ensure 1/ support nightmares, 2/ direct competition with game publishers, 3/ extremely low barrier of entry for competitors, 4/ not beeing an entertainment company, 5/ service beeing hacked under a week. It would be something TOTALLY different from what they try to do. This is akin to 'Apple must port OS X to windows to make money'. Geezus.
I could go like that throught the whole article. There is that 'hard core gamer' friend of rob (hence definitely not in the target demographic), that believes phantoms sucks, but don't whant his name published because he really really want to stay on the beta program. It is so ironic...
It looks like rob hate infinium because of their product positioning ("on-demand game provider for the whole familiy"). It recalls me the Apple's iPod announcment on slasdot. "Lame", was the word used, because the hard drive was too small and it was not USB, and it was Mac only, while apple was selling a non-painfull music listening experience.
Anyway, the Phantom will most probably tank, but the idea is worthwhile anyway. Getting a game-on-demand console to the family (/not/ the hard-core gamer). Such a box could easily extend to video-on-demand (DiVX), and could be a fabulous hit.
Of course, beeing the first-mover here is really a disdvantage. And infiniumlabs have quite a bad track record.