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Phantom Console May Never Materialize
CNN Money's excellent column Game On is running a piece discussing the conspicuous absence of the Phantom console from this year's E3. The service-based system which was to allow download and purchase of games via a living-room unit has been the subject of dubious press coverage and general mistrust, all of which appears to have been well deserved. From the article: "The company believes, based on past performance, that there is a high likelihood that sufficient capital will not be available ... and many or all of these milestones will be missed and the launch date will again shift and/or the company will go out of business..."
Phantom Console May Never Materialize
+5, Amazing Grasp of the Obvious.
Trolling is a art,
It's called the "Phantom" for godsakes! I can't believe that anyone ever believed it'd be made. I figured it was a money making scam from day one.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Seriously now, did anybody really expect that it would?
---- I'll take you in a Hunt deathmatch any day.
They sure nailed that one, didn't they!
am totally shocked.
I'm so surprised, I wanted it! I'll have to buy a XBox and/or Gamecube and/or PS2 now, all that waiting for nothing :(
I had more hope for it than for my Virtual Boy, Sega CD and Neo Geo pocket...
the launch titles will be Duke Nukem and Team Fortress 2
"Old man yells at systemd"
"Phantom Console May Never Materialize"
Also,
water is wet...
fire is hot...
full story at 11.
Beauty is in the eye of the beerholder.
I forgot about the phantom for the last 6 months!
And I was so looking forward to playing Duke Nukem Forever on the Phantom with those monkeys flying out of my butt. :-)
I can't wait to see what happens when Phantom tries to sue CNN...
I for one am completely shocked that this piece of mostly vaporware would be underfunded and unable to come to the market.
After the suprise that the Phantom is well a phantom. Duke Nukem Forever has been shelved, as well as Team Fortess II.
Seriously Is this that big of a suprise? If I could have bet in Vegas about Phantom being vapor I would have put all my money in it.
---In a time of Chimpanzees I was a Monkey.
Mathmeticians around the world discover that 2+2 is, in fact, 4.
Downloads games? Wow. Does it come with a free 10g fiber connection to the house?
With the console games getting as fat as they've been (i.e. full DVD media) how in the hell do you expect people to download that much material (for one) and since it's not on a copy protected media, how would you trust that someone wouldn't just copy if off the local HD and play it for free?
And dont tell me about subscription unlocks and stuff. If they've figured out how to mod an XBox to play pir..err..copie...err.. BACKED UP games, hacked Windows XP to not need activation, hacked DirecTV / Dish / Cable / whatever, then surely whatever "authentication scheme" they choose will be broken, too.....
= Grow a brain...
Awww, and they just confirmed the release date for the Phantom port of Duke Nukem:Forever!
-Hmm...I got a G+ invite, better remember to remove the request from my sig...-
HardOCP did a great expose on this company.
Of course, they then sued HardOCP and were generally nasty, so I'm pretty happy about the way this all turned out.
Read all about it here.
There, now I've done my karma-whoring for the day.
In other news, Daikatana 2 may not materialize...
also from TFA, "even though the release date of the console is being pushed back, there was an exclusive deal made with 3drealms - Duke Nukem Forever will be a Phantom exclusive game, in honor of both the Phantom and DNF's status as vaporware."
Looks like the Menace has passed us then.
I mean, anyone with half a brain knew from the beginning this was a joke. (The fact there were plenty of people with less than half a brain is topic for another discussion.) The real question is... why? What was/is the deal for this operation? What sort of probably-criminal activity was the purpose-of-being for Infinium?
From the "Gentlemen-faces-on-stun" department.
"Derp de derp."
The efficient market theory at work.
Even if it did come out, what were its chances of competing against the PS3, Xbox360, and Nintendo Revolultion?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Infinium Labs has announce the "Phantom 2", code-named "Ephemeral".
Infinium Labs had to engage in illegal junk-faxing for a pump 'n' dump stock scheme earlier this year.
If the company is that far down the tubes, there's not much hope of it ever producing a product.
I think that when you're talking about distributing whole games off the internet, you're talking about a collosal waste of time.
Xbox 360 will have a similar distribution model, minus the insane front-end time to download. We'll see if that works.
It absolutely kills me that money has been thrown at this company. It was clearly a scam.
Video Game News, FAQs, etc
Neo: I just got this strange feeling of deja vu.
Trinity: A deja vu is usually a glitch in the Matrix. It happens when they change something.
Me: Uh... guys. The only thing they're changing again is their mailing address for corporate headquarters. Which is probably a public restroom in downtown Phoenix this time around.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Their CEO has a very very long history of failed buisness ventures. Hard OCP reported this over 2 years ago and then Infinium tried to sue them.
l abs_gets_litigious/
No surprise at all really. It's one of the biggest example of vapourware ever....
Here's the HardOCP article which they got sued for. Loads of dodgy looking stuff here:
http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NTEyLDI=
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/02/20/infinium_
...their stock is up 4% (1 shiny penny).
Who the hell names a pre-release console Phantom, anyway? It's like naming your new software product VapourWare.
Not since Marie-Antoinette played milkmaid has looking simple and honest been so fake and complicated.
Now what am i going to do with 100,000 shares of infiniumlabs ?
"When they invent bitch slaps that can go through a monitor you better f'ing duck" --deft (253558)
I di...[BONK!] [Gets hit with a rubber chicken] ;P
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Sky is blue! ...
MS Office sucks.
Slow news day or what?
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Last I heard it is supposed to launch in November of this year.
It was also supposed to debut at the Microsoft Mobile & Embedded DevCon 2005. Was anyone there? Was there any media coverage?
and finally.. and interview with the president of infinium labs... he discusses the launch date and the development milestones: http://www.tradersnation.com/iflb.shtml
I mean, they called it the Phantom, for Pete's sake. Are they that arrogant?! Because if i was a [n incredibly stupid] venture capitalist that fell for this one, i'd want their asses but quick.
There are 01 types of people in this world. Those that understand binary, and me.
It's official, slashdot is now THE slowest source of news on the net.
It was bound to happen.
I know the Phantom was a pure investment scam. But how hard would it have been to actually make a product for sale?!
It's a PC, connected to a TV, with a server on the internet from which you can download games. If some company in China had come up with the idea, it'd have taken them a week to release a product.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
when we had the HardOCP article last year.
Thanks Captain Obvious!
Pretty Pictures!
For Immediate Release
CONTACT:
Timothy Roberts
Infinium Labs
www.phantom.net
SOMEWHERE,NIGERIA,5/20/2005
We might be going out of business like there is no tomorrow...But we sure made a killing on the market!
Why my stock went all the way up to $1.00 a share and we made millions off of those stupid stock traders.
With all our newfound money that we swindled from the market, we'll just probably go startup another company to steal money from people...I hear Nigeria is a good place to do stuff like this.
ABOUT INFINIUM LABS
We're a company that has produced nothing and made millions doing it. Now we're going to take all our money and run.
Just add {In Space!} to anything.
Fortunately downloading a library of video games is coming soon anyway. Thank you, Nintendo Revolution.
Now if only they price the games/service competitively. . .
- Reference to it running Duke Nukem Forever: Check
- Obvious Pun on Platform Name: Check.
- Reference to Original Hard OPC Article: Check.
- Link to Penny Arcade strip on Phantom:....?
Woo-hoo! A chance to Karma Whore!Take two! They're small!
And another!
And still another!
Crow T. TrollbotI wasn't lucky enough to go, but this guy was. He shares his E3 blog and pics.
Linux Resources
Probably sitting in front of his monitor right now rolling one out. Ohhhh god ohhhhh i'm so important ohhhhh ohhhhhh i took them out ohhhhh ohhhhh splat...
No go back to fixing your reviews as to how your suppliers want them to come out.
TO THE MOON!!!!
Jonathan
http://www.goodbye-carchecks.co.uk/
Perhaps is it because the Phantom is platform for Duke Nukem Forever?
This is my sig. There are thousands more, but this one is mine.
Hi. My Name is Timothy Roberts, President of the esteemed company Infinium Labs, in the United States of America, under glory of God. We are a company highly successful with video games. Unfortunately our name has been tarnished by the infad^H^H^H^H^Heditors of online magazines. The effect of these words were to promote our bankers to halt the access to our accounts. Through our business dealings I aforementioned we had secured FIVE MILLION DOLLARS ($5000000, or 60000 camels^H^H^H^H^H^Hschoolchildren). Through a gift of God we were given your email address. We require a person whom with we may complete the aforementioned business transaction. For your honour in saving our corporation we will award you 30 percent. please reply soon. www.phantom.net
twitter.com/gravitronic
Well, they only have about a year to get it going, before Nintendo does it first with the Revolution.
The world moves for love. It kneels before it in awe.
Maybe they learned something from history.
Anyone remember the Sega Channel?
From the Infinium Labs website:
Phantom(TM) Game Receiver
* AMD® Athlon(TM) XP 2500+ central processing unit (CPU)
* NVIDIA® GeForce(TM) FX 5700 Ultra graphics processing unit (GPU)
* NVIDIA nForce(TM)2 Ultra 400 platform processor
* 256 MB RAM
* 40 GB local content cache
* Microsoft Windows XP® Embedded Operating System
* Dynamic, personalized user interfaces customizable for age, gender or technical expertise
* Lapboard, mouse and game pad included
* HDTV and Dolby® Digital 5.1 compatible
* Works with any consumer-standard broadband Internet Service Provider (ISP): DSL or faster
You mean to tell me they've spent millions of dollars trying to build a normal computer, and FAILING??? What kind of real stupidity is going on here?
Does this mean the 90's style .coms really are coming back?
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
if only they had acquired CherryOS then it would run Duke Nukem Forever
You gotta love this stuff.
From Infinium's Investor relations section; Under SEC filings, reads the following words:
You can browse SEC filings in Edgar by clicking here. Note that you will be redirected to an external website. We cannot guarantee the accuracy and timeliness of any information therein.
READ: Whatever the SEC says, it just isn't true!
Also, the Infinium Labs stock closed today at $0.13 a share after an increase of five one-thousanth of a cent.
Now who wants to buy this red-hot technology at a super-low bargin price?
Contrary to the nasty and malicious rumors, it's on schedule and will happen. I'm typing this from an early production model.
It sits right next to my brand new Amiga, whose operating system is based upon a release candidate of the Hurd kernel . .
hawk
If you visit their website, they have an E3 gallery with photos of their stand. I now assume this is from last year - however it is somewhat misleading. http://www.phantom.net/mediacenter/gallery.asp
and roblimo is never wrong about anything, is he? More than once on slashdot and newsforge he's pumped these guys as being the real thing despite what everyone else says.
Guess it's not too hard to sugar-talk a loser like the Limo.
This means the "I Believe/Phantom" T-shirt I got at E3 last year will be worth more on E-Bay, right? ::Digitac
It's not like we all saw this comming a few hundred miles away or anything.
You have been warned.
I feel sorry for all of their fanboys. Poor guys been wasting years on this vapor of a system.
Ok, this is all to play. they come up with the words microsoft and sony want to hear, you open the sucker up and the glue fries the hardware (close enough to what they say)
so you have to send it in and pay for upgrades, you can't get at the actual games and such, no imput devices to load the games etc...
it's all about lets patent the ideas now, then either sell them to someone else, or wait a while, then when someone else tries this and makes money, we sue them for tons and tons of money for stealing the idea.
the guys have it planned out they never really wanted to sell these things, just come up with the idea, fight like they want it, then sit back and wait for the money to roll in.
Breaking news today. We've just recieved word the Phantom still isn't coming. In other shocking news, a massive orb of light scientists are calling the "sun" is moving across the sky. Wait, I've just recieved more astonshing news. We are getting word that smoking is infact bad for your health. Unbelivable news day folks.
What do Saddam Hussain and Little Miss Muffet have in common? They have Kurds in their Whey.
From the linked page:
His last business savvy enterprise, StreamSearch.com: paid AskJeeves $.05 per hit to use the SS database, spent $100k on a Playboy party, blew $40k on a House of Blues party where the front man for Godsmack "fell ill", then gave away >$100k in CDs and free movie tickets to Mission Impossible 2 just for giving your mailing address, and finally his marketing wizardry thought it was a good idea to change the identity from streamsearch.com to SS.com. got aryan?
The last "company meeting" had brainiac, with a straight face saying, "if anyone has any ideas for creative ways to bring extra money in, I'm all ears." Three days later, another .com folded.
It also garnered 1500+ posts over on f-dcompany.com. http://comments.fuckedcompany.com/phpcomments/inde x.php?newsid=22079&sid=1
With a track record like that how COULDN'T you invest in a boy genius like Shambro and pals?
Here's why: They're good salesmen. They've got tons of "research" that'll convince you they've got the next big thing. They've done it since Shambro was a graduate of the John Olin School of Business at Washington University in St. Louis. Oh wait, that was his resume. I forgot that WashU asked him to stop saying he was a graduate. Nevermind.
"The company believes, based on past performance, that there is a high likelihood that sufficient capital will not be available ... and many or all of these milestones will be missed and the launch date will again shift and/or the company will go out of business..."
We haven't been able to scam anymore money from people because they are finally starting to realize we are not legit. Time to move on to our next scam.
5:30 on a friday...It almost seemed rational to me.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
...with my $50 phantom online gift certificate? those bastards!!
Well, at least the Phantom story is a marker, showing how credible are those who reported on it as real. In our age of stenographer journalism, that kind of info is very valuable.
If only the gaming press covered Washington DC, we might get a sense of the truth there, by subtracting the lies. Talk about disappearing phantoms...
--
make install -not war
You know, I kind of wish it did come out and was just a phenomenal platform, just to see slashdotters' response. Though the people who trashed the Xbox didn't really say much after it came out and turned to be a decent system...
Yes, I know this is different, yes I'm aware that Infinium is a very dodgy company and the chances of a working living breathing console coming from them are very very remote.
BUT. In SEC filings companies are required by law to give worst-case scenarios for their business. The original article was somewhat dishonest in portraying this as anything major regarding the Phantom. It doesn't matter how successful the company, if they're registering with the SEC they will have to say things that can go wrong.
... that Agilent didn't sue them, seeing as how Agilent's line of oscilloscopes is called Infinium.
"Speed? so you wait a few days for the download"
<sarcasm>
Well, yes, because obviously I have no other use for my internet connection for _days_ than to download a game. Surely it'll be no problem take a break from downloading anything else, and for that matter from playing anything online, just to download a game.
And it makes so much sense to download 5 GB worth of game data (I can think of a few XBox games which, yes, are a full DVD) for days, and then find I can finish the game in 10 hours. Because that's about how long it took to finish, say, Fable. Or find out that I don't even like the game at all.
'Course, blimey, I'll then just give up gaming for another few days until the next game downloads. Because, of course, being a gamer is about _not_ playing games, but merely twiddling thumbs for days while a game downloads.
And then there's the issue of games I purchased last year, but feel like playing again. Of course. It's so obvious: a console will come with a couple of terrabytes hard drive to keep all the games I buy until I feel like playing them again. That or I'll gladly spend another few days downloading to get a nostalgic fix of Sega GT 2002.
Just owning the DVD and just popping it in to play it _now_ is sooo last century. Spending days downloading is the way of the future.
</sarcasm>
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
He says it's all ready to go. They just need to get production started. It sounds really good the way they are describing it - "An Itunes for Video Games - in your living room." "We are the world's largest video game store." Pricing it at $20 a month sub, two year contract gets you the console.
Interviewer did a poor job because he didn't ask the most important question - WHAT ABOUT THE GAMES!!!
I can't wait for their next console: the Vapor!
Companies realize they can maximize their profit margins by not having to muck about with "product" or "content". It worked for the dot-coms!
the guys at Phantom have spent quite a bit of time thinking about those issues and well... uh... the answer they came up with was: slip the launch date some more.
What the fuck is that?! What IS that Pvt. Roberts?!
A Phantom console.
A Phantom console! And how the fuck did it get in here?!
I took it from the investors.
You took it from the [i]investors[/i].
With all the companies that *ARE* at E3, CNN chooses to talk about a company that was nothing but a shill to separate stupid investors from their millions?
Phantom failed to show up at *last* year's E3, and when people called them on it, Inifium Labs tried to sue them.
The fact they didn't show up at this year's E3 isn't news.
The Phantom was never news. It was a disaster waiting to happen. A joke that required no punchline.
Water is wet!
2B || !2B
Not to mention a player doesn't have to download everything at once.
It could download each level as the player needs, and even do it wisely, downloading the next level while the player is playing the current level.
Thus it may take a week to download the entire game (depending on how much the player plays) but the end-user wouldn't notice a difference.
The only product a small firm could release now i s a linux based emulation station with inbuilt MAME (with dvd support), snes, genesis, ps1, etc... With all the linux binaries for the ported games preinstalled. That would amount to about 1Mn games in total or something like that. And all this can be done thru ebay. even i could do this!! just need to make a nice box, with dvd support and btx and a tv out(hdtv) and a custom linux.
I just left E3 (litterally on wifi 5 blocks away) with 1200 pictures and not one of the Phantom Console. I saw it last year.
Maybe it'll show up mysteriously when I get the pictures developed...
Can I still do that with digital?
more of the same on Twitter.
What the heck is E3 already ??
Speaking of "Phantom" consoles, whatever happened to the ApeXtreme from Apex Digital? It was supposed to be a DVD player with the ability to play PC based games and also have PVR functionality. The PC games were to run from a unique loader to install and run the game automatically. Original specs were based on VIA C3 and Deltachrome but later changed to Athlon XP 2000 with Nvidia Nforce2 and GFMX4 graphics. I haven't heard anything about it since around mid 2004.
SYSTEM 88 IS COMING!
Really, to believe that this thing was ever going to exist, you'd have to be an imbecile or something.
There's obvious, and then there's obvious, and then there's THIS.
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
The Phantom Never Materializes... wow, what a shocker!?! Ghosts don't materialize every time especially when they are the main story for years one end.
TW
Television is dead. Long live That Weasel Television
You know, I kind of wish it did come out and was just a phenomenal platform, just to see slashdotters' response.
It's not that we don't want a Phantom console, it's just that I have this deed to the Brooklyn Bridge, and I'm strapped for cash, so I'm willing to let it go for cheap if you can pay cash right now...
You can't take the sky from me...
You should have posted that logged in...
Wasn't The Phantom Console Episode I ... we're up to Episode III already people!
Sure enough, the cow costume was hanging up next to the superhero outfit and sailors uniform. (S,Spud)
"I am Jack's complete lack of surprise."
Chris Mattern
I think that picture has already been posted on /.
All good things...
So let's not blame the entire USA legal system.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
That's the COOL thing about the Phantom. It's non-material, so it takes no physical space at all in your living room. Eat that Nintendo! Your console is still very space consuming compared to the physics-bending system that is the Phantom!