Phantom

[erikss0n]

Hi,

At this years E3, Infiniumlabs where supposed to release their gameconsole "Phantom" to the masses.
However, I have not seen a single newspost about this on the web.
Is it a "BITBOYS:er" or is there actually a future for this product?
And where are the data and specs etc.?

BR,
eriksson
:confused:

[Riff]

You haven't seen any posts because no one is buying into their propaganda.

Phantom.net has remained static for the last six months and <sarcasm> boy do those artists renderings look sexy </sarcasm>. The guy touts Phantom as being the biggest revolution since transistors and yet he figures people will be excited about geopaint images of a monolithic plastic case. The drawings aren't even anti-aliased. I think that clue you in enough that this product is going to be a clunker.

Infiniumlabs.com has almost no substantial content and they still haven't revealed the internal specs or pictures of the real machine, but hey, you can buy t-shirts *now*! Or, if you like, you can go to their careers section and get their address to submit your resume. I hope you're close to retirement if you do so. No, wait, you *are* close to retirement if you do so.

The whole ploy has more or less revealed itself. The 'console' is nothing more than a standard PC modified to keep our grubby hands from tampering with it. The guy in charge of the company is a network engineer and his plan is to have all software for the console be pay-per-play, rented or bought through a download-on-demand online service. Strike one. The evangelism for the console is off the scale and they claim there will be over 5000 (50,000?) titles available at launch. Thats because most of them will be shovelware titles that have been released over the past decade. Strike two. I can't think of anything else that will make it seem any worse than it already does so I'll just skip to strike three.

I doubt we'll ever see Phantom come to market and even if we do it will probably be entirely underwhelming in terms of game playing. Look for Phantom, coming soon to a state fair near you!

[poursoul]

wow.

something you wanna tell us Riff ?

[MrNasty]

Why are you being so negative.

Maybe the phatom will be the next telivision or radio :mad:

[druga runda]

and maybe Phantom will be the next BitBoys NV40 beater

[StealthHawk]

It's called Phantom because it doesn't exist :rofl

Who is Infiniumlabs? Many people have tried to break into the console market. They have all failed miserably, with the exception of Sony, which is a huge, rich, and well known company. I also think Sony was in the right place at the right time.

PS was easier to code for than Saturn, and Nintendo was late with N64, which didn't have as much developer support due to its expensive, limited cartridge format.

[MrNasty]

Infinium labs have a large development centre in the US, I saw a satalite image of it. So most likely the phantom will exist. We have allready seen veiled supposedly hardware shots of if.

So whos to say it won't be any good. Wait until you see the games mate.

[StealthHawk]

Originally posted by MrNasty
Infinium labs have a large development centre in the US, I saw a satalite image of it. So most likely the phantom will exist. We have allready seen veiled supposedly hardware shots of if.

So whos to say it won't be any good. Wait until you see the games mate.

I'm not a gullible consumer. I don't buy into wildly hyped up products. Because they are almost always a let down. I don't remember the last time a hugely hyped product has lived up to the hype, much less been released on time.

[MrNasty]

I'm not buying into the hype but keep an open mind and give it a chance.

[Morrow]

Phantom Website (http://www.phantom.net)

Forget this project, it will die before the first consoles can hit the stores.

[TECH_PC]

Hopefully it isn't just a hoax, The whole PC games thing is very interesting. I would've liked playing Doom 3 or Half-Life on it without any compatibility worries. If it is a hoax, (which is more evident everyday there isn't any word on it) too bad.

[Nebuchadnezzar]

We will select 100-300 BETA testers and you will be notified in October if you were selected.

Guess it's still a long way off...

[mariuz]

It was a mystery for NVIDIA’s Andrew Humber when asked about the reason of NVIDIA Corporation’s logotype presence on a web-site of Infinium Labs, a small startup that develops a console called Phantom. Besides, I found “Intel Inside” logotype on the same web-site here.

NVIDIA representative said that the GPU designer has once met with Infinium Labs officials, but it seems too early for the latter to place NVIDIA’s logotypes on its web-site. I have no official statement from Intel at this point.

found on
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/mmedia/display/20030703084341.html

[Uttar]

I'm lazy, so instead of typing something again, I'll just quote myself :)

From GPU:RW (http://www.notforidiots.com/GPURW.php)

X-Bit labs reports that they contacted NVIDIA's Andrew Hubber about why the NVIDIA Corporation logo is on Infinium Labs's website ( as well as Intel's. )
It was a "mystery" for him, according to X-Bit. He replied NVIDIA did meet with Infinium Labs ( the creators of the widely hyped Phantom console ) but that it was "too early for the latter to place NVIDIA's logotypes on its web-site."
I frankly can't rate this High or Low. I'd be too subjective, because personally, even though I got zero inside info on this, I believe it. It just plain makes sense.
Why? NVIDIA's CEO and President, Jen Hsun Huang, vision of the future of the industry is pretty much the exact same as Infinium Labs's, it seems. Pure coincidence? Maybe. But considering that, I wouldn't be surprised if good ole Jen would prefer to get the Phantom contract.
Furthermore, Phantom's goal is to be very near of a PC architecture to make PC games playable on it. That also means less work for the partners: the console derivative would be VERY near of the original PC product. And nVidia's know what putting too many men on a diversification project, such as the XBox, can cost - it cost them the NV3x debacle.


Uttar

[digitalwanderer]

It's FUD, pure & simple. :cool:

[jimbob0i0]

Originally posted by TECH_PC
Hopefully it isn't just a hoax, The whole PC games thing is very interesting. I would've liked playing Doom 3 or Half-Life on it without any compatibility worries. If it is a hoax, (which is more evident everyday there isn't any word on it) too bad.

And if the phantom is a download/rental style device as is firmly believed in most quarters how long would you be prepared to wait to download D]|[ or HL2 in it's entirety? And for games of that size it had better have a huge HDD in it if you want to play more than a few different ones :p

[The Baron]

I hereby declare the Phantom to be DOA.

[Uttar]

Originally posted by jimbob0i0
And if the phantom is a download/rental style device as is firmly believed in most quarters how long would you be prepared to wait to download D]|[ or HL2 in it's entirety? And for games of that size it had better have a huge HDD in it if you want to play more than a few different ones :p

Well, that all depends on the quality of servers I guess. For example, to a good quality server in Belgium, I can do 3Mbps - that is 375KBps.

So, in one hour: 375*60*60 = 1350000
Transforming that into MBs:
1350MB per hour
And into GBs:
1,35GB per hour

Okay, so if you got a not-as-good connection or a bad server which doesn't do anything near your peak ( eh, in connection to America, I rarely get more than 60KBps ) , then you're in fairly big trouble ( although letting it download through the night might work anyway )

Frankly, the idea of downloading it while you aren't there is good IMO, and the criticism of such an idea is kinda injustified IMO.

But yeah, Phantom might be FUD, or that whole deal might be FUD. What I'm saying here is that it's *possible* that isn't - I don't want to say it's a given.


Uttar

[deejaya]

From their homepage, it says it can run PC games too unless I read it wrong. It would be pretty handy if you could buy D3 or HL2 instead of downloading it, and just plonk it on your console.

But yeah, I think this "console" will live up to it's name pretty well too. :)

[reever2]

Originally posted by MrNasty
Infinium labs have a large development centre in the US, I saw a satalite image of it. So most likely the phantom will exist. We have allready seen veiled supposedly hardware shots of if.


Really? I've heard that INfinium Labs is actually running out of a strip mall somewhere in Florida