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[GDJustin]

Forget the jokes and the horrible track record of the CEO. Pretend like the phantom is being made by... I dunno. HP or Alienware. Is the IDEA itself really that bad? For a monthly fee you get access to a whole library of "lesser" or older PC titles, with all the hottest new games available for preimum download. The cable TV analogy really doesn't seem that poor. For a monthly fee there's basic service, but you can pay more for HBO or skin channels, or whatever else you want.

A good read on the subject, with a bunch of new quotes from the CEO:

http://biz.gamedaily.com/features.asp?article_id=7949&section=feature&email=


All of this being said, the Phantom is still going to bomb bomb bomb, but I guess I just don't see what's so poor about the concept itself...

 

[Joe]

people here love to hate. id love to see phantom succeed just to stuff in the haters faces.

 

[WarPig]

Phantom's a peach of an idea that needs someone with real money behind it.

DFS.

 

[Prospero]

Slashdot (link here) reported today that the Phantom is going to miss its release date.

 

[RevenantKioku]

people here love to hate. id love to see phantom succeed just to stuff in the haters faces.

Why not the love for the N-Gage?
Little fucker is so stupid, its cute.

 

[Rhindle]

No, it's a pretty good idea, and it could be a real godsend for independent software developers if it really takes off.

People around here just hate on anything not controlled by their Japanese conglomerate of choice.

 

[GDJustin]

Slashdot reported today that the Phantom is going to miss its release date.

The CEO discusses that in the article. Sorta dodges it, really. But yeah delay rumors have been flying around for a week or two now.

 

[Joe]

n-gage is pretty freakin cool if you ask me.

 

[Ghost]

i met someone with an n-gage monday, i resisted the urge to scream WHY in his face, just aswell i did he seems like a nice guy.


I did giggle when he got voicemail and did some sidetalking though, GAF thread flashback.

 

[Crazymoogle]

The core idea of broadband distribution is a a good idea and certainly one that the big 3 would like to see take off in the future, but the key word is future. Korea might be ready, but North America just doesn't have the high capacity internet service for game distro to really take off.

For an effective distribution system, the console provider would need to work out a series of cable/adsl deals to ensure stronger bandwidth and remove monthly bandwidth limitations. And with game machines INCREASING in storage space in the future (via more dual-layer DVD, HD-DVD or Bluray), the process isn't going to get any easier.

With old titles (of little market importance) and titles designed directly for the service, it might be easier to reduce bandwidth concerns, but the whole process is really like shoving a square peg in a round hole.

Historically, it's easier to deal with retailers rather than service providers, so I imagine if any new distribution method takes off in the future, it will probably be a variation on the kiosk model, with discs burned or data written in store. (That's still just an ideal pipeline solution though)

 

[Kon Tiki]

Phantom will be Xenon/XNA done right.

 

[miyuru]

What a good idea! Praise Infinium, since they thought of it first! :rolleyes

It's a good idea, but people hate on Infinium because it obviously won't work out in the case of the Phantom.

 

[Mr_Furious]

My 'hatred' (if you want to call it that) about this concept is based on the fears of the industry eventually adopting this format solely. With content providers bitching more and more each year about the increase in dev costs, they'll always try to find ways to minimize overhead and not having to press discs and print packaging/manuals is something they'll obviously investigate quicker if there is an established channel in the marketplace. I don't want to pay premium dollar for digital transfers that could easily get erased or become obsolete of the company were to go under or something.

The whole idea just scares me

 

[Ulairi]

It really is a stupid idea. Pay full price for games and pay for a service, if you cancel the service you cannot play your games.

DUMB!

 

[aaaaa0]

IT'S NOT A DUMB IDEA IF NINTENDO DOES IT!!!111

VIVA LA REVOLUTION.

;-)

 

[DarienA]

Great idea...terrible timing....

 

[DopeyFish]

Great idea.

But... there is no Infinium first parties (it's almost impossible to create a successful console without any exclusive first party games).

And layering on top of that, all the current and past successful platform developers almost ALWAYS had to make a splash in making games before entering the hardware platform arena.

MS/Sony/Nintendo/Sega/Atari. All made games before making home consoles. [PC/Arcade/for other consoles] Infinium? Made nothing. It all comes down to trust and competancy.

 

[Phoenix]

Its a decent idea, but its poorly supported, marketed, and timed. Its chances of success are low, and I think its the wrong timing for a 'media less' console.

 

[Culex]

The problem with PC gaming is that it is constantly evolving every 4-6 months based on the product cycles of video cards. It would be impossible to make a dedicated "console" with locked in PC parts to play PC games. One year later, you'd be stuck with this outdated machine that wouldn't even be gaurunteed to run the games you download.

I cannot possibly see the Phantom ever coming to fruition.

 

[seismologist]

It's got failure written all over it unless they start making their own games or something.

 

[Agent X]

The core idea of broadband distribution is a a good idea and certainly one that the big 3 would like to see take off in the future, but the key word is future.

It really is a stupid idea. Pay full price for games and pay for a service, if you cancel the service you cannot play your games.

MS/Sony/Nintendo/Sega/Atari. All made games before making home consoles. [PC/Arcade/for other consoles] Infinium? Made nothing. It all comes down to trust and competancy.

All of the above are quotes I agree with.

I do think that distribution of games over the Internet is a good idea; it might eventually become the rule rather than the exception. I feel that in about 10 years, all of the major consoles will offer this type of service, either as a primary or secondary means of game distribution (if secondary, then primary will still be the good old fashioned "buy physical disc/cartridge at store").

However, Infinium Labs is an unproven company, with a shaky track record full of broken promises and vaporware announcements. It would be very hard to put your faith in a company that has misled the public so much and still looks like it might go belly up within the next few months.

Continuing on Ulairi's comment above, what if the company goes bust, and the plug is pulled on the network? Will you get to keep the games that you've downloaded to your hard drive? If you're the type of gamers who tends to buy a lot of games (more than 10) over the course of ownership of a system, then in the case of the Phantom, you're probably going to have to delete some games to make room for new ones. If you cancel the service, or the service becomes defunct, then games that you've "bought" are now lost forever. That's the downside of not having the physical media in your hands...you don't really "own" the game, it's more like an extended rental.

The whole thing smacks of DIVX (not the video codec, but rather the twisted DVD spinoff format from a few years ago). A lot of people were left holding the bag when the DIVX company kicked the bucket.

I don't get the feeling that Infinium Labs is truly in this for the long haul. They seem to be dodging a lot of the big questions that gamers have. Besides, they're not really bringing anything compelling to the table; I don't see any reason why I'd want to buy this system.

 

[shoplifter]

 

[Nintendo Ate My Children]

It really is a stupid idea. Pay full price for games and pay for a service, if you cancel the service you cannot play your games.

DUMB!

It's a freaking retarded idea. I guess we're on that part of the message board cycle where we have to decide crap may not be crap after all in order to have something to talk about. Phantom was a dumb idea. Might as well start referring to it in past tense now.

So was N-Gage, BTW. So was Game.com, for anyone who wants to try defending that one.

 

[gblues]

Heh, game.com. I remember that Tiger kinda forgot to register www.game.com and some enterprising individual pointed it at a porn site (Hasbro seems to own it now).

Phantom is a fucking stupid idea. Let's pick a 2-year old game: Morrowind. The contents of the Morrowind CD weigh in at 583MB. This would take at least 53 minutes to download on a 1.5mbit/sec DSL line, and that's being hugely optimistic about my actual transfer rate.

Now if it was something like a Music Club meets Tivo thing, where I pay a monthly subscription and get games downloaded automatically to my unit, get to keep my games permanently, and maybe have other games downloaded automatically based on other games I've played, then I could see it working. And if they actually developed something like this for a normal PC rather than trying to a set-top box, we might see a revitalization of the PC gaming market.

Nathan

 

[thorns]

Xbox Live Arcade.

 

[djtiesto]

Yeah, I prefer to own tangible copies of games, not have them download for the time being. And, say I bought a Phantom, and it ends up doing poorly and they can it and shut down the service... does that mean my games I had downloaded will run out of their subscriptions, and I will never will get to buy new games for it and I'm stuck with a $300 doorstop? I can still find FM Towns Marty or PC-FX games on ebay...

 

[Mr_Furious]

What works for one form of media doesn't necessarily mean it'll work for the others. The difference between TV and gaming is passive entertainment vs interactive entertainment plus the obvious huge differences in technology advancement timeframes.

Dumb idea to it's very core.

 

[xsarien]

On paper, the Phantom probably looked great. But cutting the retailers out of the loop after they sell the hardware on a razor thin margin won't win them any friends.

Also, their pricing model is ludicrous. I need to pay to subscribe to a network, and then pay for games on top of that, presumably full price because everyone's greedy? No thanks.