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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."
I love watching technology developers compete, and especially using the better products that result. Go capitalism!
Don't blame me -- I voted for Roslin.
I'm all for competition in the console market place, but the real question is if Infinium's product is going to be competitive at all. The way the console is being planned and the way it is being marketed are questionable at best.
Does anyone here truly believe that the Phantom is going to be in anyway competitive with the other consoles in the market? It seems to be trying to straddle to gap in between console and pc gaming, and I don't think it will succeed because a better gaming experience can be found on either side, but the middle will simply be a tepid experience at best.
I have been following this company from the initial reports that they are a scam to the lawsuit to E3. I sat down with their head rep at E3 and had a long chat with them.
My short take is a low-end PC with a pay-per play rental model for old games. Yee-friggin haw, sign me up. There was nothing there that I couln't do myself with only spending a little money on a plastics prototype shop and a flash interface for the UI. Oh yeah, an auto body shop for a spiffy paint job also.
Then there is the more troubling aspect. They sued Kyle/HOCP for a negative report. From my perspective, it looks like they picked a fight for no reason. The story on HOCP was 6 months old and pretty much forgotten. If they had come up with a prototype and sent it to Kyle and said 'see, we are real, print a retraction please', I would bet good money that Kyle would have done so.
No, these morons, and I use the term with no disrepect meant toward anyone who is a clinical moron, sued HOCP. There is nothing in my mind that cemented the fact that they are indeed a scam with a lot to cover up than this fact.
Then it gets better. Read the letters that their lawyers sent Kyle, they are laughable. They are typo ridden, somewhat contradictory, and leave you with the distinct impression that the Infinium legal squad is a bunch of chucklefscks. Go read Kyles account of it, and the legalish stuff he was sent. Then go check out www.whereisphantom.com for a more up to date list.
I think the lawsuit will obliterate them, not that they were real to begin with, they are acting WAY to much like they have a mass grave full of skeletons, and the Iraqi WMDs to hide.
So, moving right along, back to E3. I write for The Inquirer, and I went to the Infinium booth at E3. I told them my concerns, and as a writer I told them I would never write something objective about them, IE no coverage for anything but news about the lawsuit, until they dropped the lawsuit AND apologized to Kyle.
Why? Simple, they sued Kyle for in my opinion, a well researched, fair article about their state of being. Imagine you get a review copy, could you be honest under those circumstances? If they sue for negative reviews, how can you be sure any review is even close to honest? Think about that as a chilling effect.
No, the short answer is Infinium by its actions and inactions appears to be a scam. I said roughly the same thing about CDs when the RIAA launched the Napster suit, no purchases until it is resolved. If it is resolved in the favor of Napster, I would buy again. If it isn't, no more music sales. I have not missed the music I no longer buy. The other analogy is SCO, would you buy a copy of Openserver knowing they sue their clients? Same with Infinium. Drop the suit guys, and backpedal hard, or you get no lovin from me.
Sadly, I don't think you will live long enough to ever make a purchasable product, the HOCP article says most of what I need to know, and your confirmation of it's accuracy with your actions tells the rest. Stick a fork in Infinium, they are done.
-Charlie
*there's a coax connector labelled "Cable Modem" and an RJ45 connector labelled "DSL". WTF?*
well, to the cable modem labeled you would attach... surprise surprise: the tv cable...
and to the dsl jack.. the dsl (rj45) cable.
so it would have a cable modem and a dsl modem built in, what's so surprising about that? that's the least faulty thing in their business plan.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
- Specs of machine inadequate to play DOOM 3 which means it's not even a reasonably high enough grade machine.
- No CD or DVD drive means you can't play other games on it and also means its limited to finite capacity (internal disk space) meaning eventually some games you paid for have to be be erased to fit new ones on it. If those become unavailable you're out of luck.
- System design makes it essentially useless for any other purpose except playing games (you can use a Nintendo 64 as an expensive DVD Player out of the box as well as a game machine, and you can with an XBOX if you buy a remote for it).
- Company believes its system is unhackable which means they are in for a shock when people figure a way to hack it.
- System runs off of a modified version of Windows XP, which not only means they're paying a fortune for licensing fees, and their supplier is one of their competitors, it also means it's vulnerable to all of the typical problems of a common PC.
- Service charge is a whopping $29.95 a month, not including premium games, which are an extra charge.
- Can only play games bought for a machine on that machine, you can't take the game someplace else, like you can with a Nintendo or XBox
- If you stop your subscription the games no longer work and all of them that you 'bought' go bye-bye
- If the company goes out of business, all the games you 'bought' will no longer work and all of them go bye-bye
- I think if you don't have an Internet connection you can't use the machine at all.
- (This one is from personal knowledge, not the article) A system like this called 'The Game Channel', which I think was from Sega, tried this a few years ago over Cable, for $9.95 a month. It went bust
- If they get less than 200,000 subscribers they will be losing money and probably go under, fast; if they get more they will be deeply in debt, and based on the numbers, there is exactly $0 available to pay back that debt after deducting costs.
- Competitors not giving away hardware can undercut them on price, operate a system much cheaper and will make a profit.
- System depends upon access to broadband (access via dial-up would be agonizingly slow and probably unusable) which means the customer is going to have problems with others if the other people's uses (net phone, downloading, telecommuting) mean there isn't enough bandwidth available.
In short, there are so many advantages to this system I can't see how it can possibly succeed^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h fail!The lessons of history teach us - if they teach us anything - that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.
"Capitalism is as much about cooperation as competition. Just look at how many people must cooperate to produce a computer chip."
Right, those people are cooperating -- but because it's in their nature? It's in their nature to want to make money, and they are being paid. It's cooperation, yes, but not selfless cooperation. Someone with a higher goal is employing those chip designers and packagers in order to make money. The expectation of selfless cooperation from everyone is socialism's single flaw.
Don't blame me -- I voted for Roslin.
Between April and June, Nintendo made 22.6 billion yen ($202 million USD). Who is Intel and AMD marketing the brand new high end chips they develop to? Oh, gamers.