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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,
the launch titles will be Duke Nukem and Team Fortress 2
"Old man yells at systemd"
I can't wait to see what happens when Phantom tries to sue CNN...
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...
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...
I'm quite happy it didn't come out - it means that
a) Darwin is doing his work on it's investors and
b) there would have been something desperately wrong with a world where Phantom is released and Indrema is canned.
The efficient market theory at work.
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.
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_
Actually, I wish they would release that cool "couch" keyboard they developed. But of course, it'd have to be wireless.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
...their stock is up 4% (1 shiny penny).
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)
- 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. TrollbotFrom 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?
I am reminded of the body armor that I made for my son. He was getting bullied at school by other fourth graders because he got glasses at the beginning of the school year. It nearly brought me to tears to see him come home with his shirt torn, his bookbag covered with mud and the tears in his eyes. The memories of my own childhood came back and I recalled the day that horrible Horrigan boy kicked me into a puddle of mud. I vowed that this was not going to happen to my son.
I set to work (it was about October) and started looking for diagrams of the Star Wars storm trooper outfits. My son was rather excited at the prospect of having body armor to wear to school. We both dilligently researched and plotted our plan of attack. It took me about two months of work and nearly $1400, but the end result was perfect. He looks like a storm trooper. His body armor is equipped with surface tazer capabiltiy. All he has to do is press a button on his glove and the whole suit becomes electrically charged!
I also worked on embedding a cell phone and mobile camera so that he can send me pictures, instant messages and even call me at work during the day should he need anything. I made sure to place the cell antenna sticking off of the right shoulder so he doesn't get exposed to dangerous microwaves (which I really doubt are a propblem, but you never know for sure). The attacks have stopped. The kids don't want to get near him. I did get called in by the school superintendent, but I explained the situation and said this was the only way that my kid would be safe since the teachers obviously have better things to do than safeguard the children from bullies. I also gave her the names of the boys that harrassed my son and she balked saying those kids were the stars of the little league team. I said, "That is exactly my point. The athletes tend to be the worst offenders of courtesy". She didn't like the idea, but I had done nothing illegal.
Anyway... the keyboard looks like it's the same kind of plastic I used for my son's armor. That's why it reminds me of it.
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
It certainly beats the article. Anyone talking about Phantom consoles should be modded off topic so we can focus on the Stormtrooper fantasy.
From the linked page:
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.
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.