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Infinium Labs to Miss Release Date
Saist (and several others) writes "WhereisPhantom.com is reporting that Infinium Labs will not release the Phantom until 2005.
" While this doesn't appear to widely reported or verified yet, coming as it does on the heels of recent news it's not hard to imagine that this is true.
Not that WIP's continuing work isn't appreciated.
The most telling indicator that this is true is that none of the major retailers will let you pre-order a Phantom through their site. Sony only confirmed the new PStwo today and you can already pre-order one on EBgames.com. However, neither they nor GameStop, Amazon, Best Buy, nor any other site I can find will let you pre-order the Phantom, officially coming out well within the pre-order window of most games & consoles. If the stores don't think it's going to happen, it's not going to happen.
This has been done before. You start a company with a more or less reasonable business plan requiring millions of start-up capital. You get people on board with the cash. You go public to get even more cash and then you eventually burn up the start-up capital, claim you need millions more to continue, either you get more cash or you then close up shop. The founders/majority shareholders get out of it with a nice big profit.
All the while in order to stay within the boundaries of a legit business so you can't get prosecuted, you DO spend some money on some product development... Just not at the levels you SHOULD be if you fully intended to bring the company into full fruition.
Another strategy for the prime founder(s) is to make yourself such a pain in the ass that the other share-holders buy you out (again, at a huge profit). Wouldn't surprise me if you eventually hear that Bachus buys out Roberts.
By then of course the company is a bleeding shell with no hope of recovery and the original founder is living large.
It IS a viable concept. Look at Stream? It took me a matter of moments to download an run Counter-Strike. Even if the system isn't perfect, its still a proof of concept
After seeing the "prototype" that HardCOOP got. It took a YEAR to develop that? They didn't even have any software for it!
It would of taking less than 3 weeks to get the prototype plastic box and case, as well as being under a $10,000 development hardware budget.
Six months is NOT enough. While it might be a simple matter of getting the spec's of the system up, the software is going to be the issue. I also doubt they will even come out.