The Phantom - myth or reality?

K, I was looking for some new ways of getting rid of my money, when I remembered that some time ago (a few years) Infinium wanted to bring a console system to the market.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Phantom_(game_system)

Information?

 

Both really because I remember at one of the E3 events not sure which year but they had a booth with them demonstrating some of the games which would be on the store. One was UT 2003. After that nothing was ever heard and it turns out there just bringing out an a la steam service instead on pcs

 

how about sending me some

anyway from what i heard around it was nothing more than a PC inside the case..

 

Yes from what I know, the phantom, was just a 2003 spec pc inside, with a custom motherboard, and graphics card.

They were shown at e3, a couple of times, and working unit's exist, but I have never heard of anyone in possesion of one, and as far as I know, you are the first person trying to obtain one.

Try to find out more information on Infinium labs, and hopefully you will get names of staff on the project, and then it may lead to you being able to track down one of these names, and get his current position at whatever company he is at, and then contact him, and see what you can find out.

I have done this in the past, and it has always helped me get more information.

 

http://www.phantom.net/home.html

Phantom trademark may not be Infiniums anymore, furthermore, they have created an on demand service games service, that is supposed to launch sometime, and have struck a deal with slienware to release their famed lapboard pc mose controller apparently.

Contact them and see where it leads you, though the phantom would seem like a poor mans pc even in prot form, it's only got a athlon 64 2500 at 2.4ghz, a 128MB Nvidia 5700FX(LOL,imagine crysis on that,0.000000000001 fps,lol) and 256mb of ram, as welll as only having an 80GB HDD.

Anmyway hope this helps you out Kammedo mate.

 

Infinium Labs had a stand at the Games Convention in 2006 and I took some photos of it:



Actually you couldn't do anything except browsing on the Infinium Labs website.


The keyboard wasn't connected to the DVD-player-like white/black thing shown on their info-pages, but to a tower-pc.

All in all a really boring presentation I must say.

 

:lol: so my money would be good spent (=thrown away) on it eh? Thanks guys, let's see if this is leading somewhere.

 

Infinidim labs is releasing that keyboard instead of the Phantom.

The Phantom is dead, always has been, always will be.

 

Yeah I heard they sold the keyboard to Alienware, and that's pretty much what happened to the hardware.

An article claimed they later on canceled the deal,
( http://www.crunchgear.com/2007/12/27/alienware-no-longer-carrying-phantom-lapboard/ ) but that Phantom themselves sold them.

( http://www.crunchgear.com/2007/12/17/the-phantom-is-actually-shipping-the-phantom-lapboard-that-is/ )

 

I never saw actual running hardware at E3, the best they could ever muster for press photos of the unit were 3D renders, no finalized hardware spec even existed. During the time when the Phantom became nothing more than a joke, Infinium was trying to find a manufacturer for its also-3D-rendered Lapboard. Looks like they eventually found one, and I heard recently that gaming/PC websites and magazines got their review samples in - should hit shelves soon if its not out already.

The Phantom was indeed stock PC hardware (no special graphics or processor), x86 CPU and I think Nvidia was the graphics vendor, but I might be wrong on this one. The idea was a good one, only offer games for download (the device had no optical drive to speak of) that would run decently on the system, removing many of the headaches novice PC gamers come across with requirement/compatibility issues. I think it could have had a viable commercial success if promoted properly, but a large chunk of that market is now Wii users... you can say it might have been ahead of its time.

Or just a piece of junk. and junk doesn't sell.

 

That lapboard thing actually came out recently. Dunno if it's good though.

 

Hard OCP made quite an investigation back in the day.

Here are some excerpts:

What we discovered was that the CEO of Infinium Labs, Timothy Roberts, has helmed several businesses that have failed or have gone bankrupt in the last six years. A couple of these high profile bankruptcies cost investors in those companies millions and millions of dollars. Mr. Roberts is now the head of a new company, Infinium Labs, and is rounding up money from investors to realize his latest vision.

Some months back we sent a photographer out to take a look at the Infinium Labs base of operations at the address listed above, but found only a small strip mall. At that time, there was only one open office space, and it contained a single desk and a telephone. Other than that, there were only a few small businesses located at this address. We were unable to tell if the open office space was Infinium Labs or not.

We sent another photographer to the address about six months later only to find that there was still no Infinium Labs located at this address, and that there hasn't been, at least according to the other residents of the mall. We contacted the Mail Boxes Etc. located at this address and discovered that mail sent to the Infinium Labs address would end up there for pick up, there was no actual storefront or office space just a post office box (#409) for Infinium Labs.


To make a long story short, the whole thing was a scam from day one. I remember they had this ugly render of a proto, then they hired some ex-Xbox guy who "refined" (read: did actual work, which nobody at infinium did cuz they didnt knew shit about consoles) the design and specs, to an apparently working proto with that shape you can see on wikipedia.

IMO it would've been successful using a subscription mode like DVRs do (and SEGA wanted to with SegaNet and the DC) but is kinda difficult to do so when the board is made up of wise-guys with little or no education trying to make a quick buck from naive investors.

Ditto

 

Yeah, compare the first model with the second...

 

http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NTEy

Says it all really

As does this

http://money.cnn.com/2006/05/16/technology/infinium/index.htm

 

i remember seeing pictures of games getting played on Phantom machines behind closed doors. There is some prototypes laying out there, or at least there was.

 

I wish i could buy that hardware. I think it would be neat just to have.

 

There you go.

 

starfox style? Do a barrel roll!

 

Where I would love to get the first case or rather the only produced case.

 

Yeah, I remember seeing Unreal 2004 on them.