Een leuk stukje tekst over de Phantom.
There have been a lot of people that have called the whole thing a hoax, whether it is because of the position of the system or because of the name. The creators say go ahead and speculate but stop laughing. The Phantom is a real thing and looks to revolutionize video gaming providing real-time game purchasing, game rental and try before you buy all on demand.
"Being a gamer, there is no two ways about it," says Dale Eldridge, Vice President of Infinium Labs. "You'll have CDs that get scratched that will no longer work and you have to front the cost to buy the same game multiple times. And you buy a system, the developer upgrades it, you can't play the game you have before on the same proprietary console, and then your little cheap $200 consumer item breaks because it is only a toy. The most frustrating is the titles only appeal to the 8-18 year olds and don't offer the genres and title selection which appeals to the 3-38 year olds which is 80% of the market today. It's frustrating. So what we've designed is a real machine with a hassle free service allowing you a infinite selection of gaming content. You no longer have to spend your time as an IT person. It can be in your living room, it can be easy to use, it is built for the hardcore horsepower driven gamer, it can appeal to all audiences, it can be convenient, and it can be FUN!'"
One of the interesting things, Tim Roberts (CEO and founder) noted is that other consoles are just PC's with Proprietary Operating Systems which actually raise the cost of games, since they have to be re-written to adapt to these consoles. He also stated that the proprietary consoles have "built themselves into a box"; this means that they have to purchase huge volumes of parts in order to achieve the economies of scale. This also ties them into the same technology for 5 years since they have produced tied up enormous amounts of there cash and don't want to obsolete themselves.
Roberts explained that the Beta tester requests were very successful. With over 28k applications on file to date we have collected some very resourceful testers which can help fine tune our product. We are planning on distributing emails to the 300 lucky testers on Sept 15th which will announce who has been selected. We will then shift gears and open beta tester requests for Europe, Asia, Mexico and Australia, as well as others. We are looking for the best, the elite hard core gamers and also the top hackers and crackers out there. We will be sending the United States and Canada beta testers consoles to them on Sept 15th. The beta testers will need to sign an agreement to provide 1 year worth of testing for us and commit to provide feed back to us regarding the service. They will be allowed to keep the equipment and games but will have to pay there own broadband access fees. We will be looking for 300 testers in each country, not just the United States and Canada.
We plan to launch our service in Europe and Asia in Q1 2005.
Unlike the other current-generation systems on the market today, all costing under 200 bucks, the Phantom looks to do something that no other video gaming console has done before. The Phantom is the most robust, upgradeable console which provides a better entertainment package and will drive down the cost of games to the consumers.
"The consumer who enters the market earlier is obviously going to pay the price," says Roberts. "The people who bought the first generation of Tivo ended up having to pay a little more. And there are going to be people who will wait thinking that second generation product will be cheaper, faster and better. But our console is upgradeable, provides a refurbish program and also there are people who are willing to come in early and adopt the product and help launch our service. As we build our subscriber base, the consumer monthly service fee goes down offset by our economies of scale. But the most dramatic change to that is when the advertising revenue is achieved; consumers are predicted to spend 7 times more time playing games than watching television over the next 5 years (DFC Intelligence). Gaming is the number one, the hottest sector in the world right now, outselling movies and music. And because of that, as the subscriber base builds and the advertising revenue comes in, we will drop the price to the consumer. Over time, in the future, we foresee there will be no monthly subscription fee, offset by the advertising revenues and large subscriber base. The basic package will include 100's of games while others are extending there package paying for games on demand and rental." We need the help of the gamers to make this a reality, say Roberts.
The folks at Infinium Labs hope to make it where you'll never have to leave your house again to buy another game. All you'll have to do is flip a switch, press a few buttons, and bam, you're in the game.
"It's pretty revolutionary to the world to think of a closed, Virtual Private Gaming Network™ or VPGN™, which is a performance based network with 50 terabyte data centers," says Tim Roberts, CEO of Infinium Labs. Interestingly, we are helping to reduce piracy which will advance games allowing developers and publishers to reap more profits to advance technology. Research has shown that for every game sold, 7 are pirated and some predict this to become a much larger number. Because of the reduced profits caused from the piracy problem, it holds back the advancements in gaming technology and virtual reality which is against the long term goals of any hardcore gamer.
To counteract the threat hackers, Infinium Labs has developed bullet-proof closed network (VPGN™) and security (BLACKNIGHT™) for the system, both digitally and physically through each layer of technology.
"We've covered the security pretty well," says Roberts. "It's pretty interesting when you see what we have done. There are actually 8 levels of security. And we have recruited hackers from groups like "The Legion of Doom (LOD) who are running layers of our security and others which are just as infamous to help in the other technical areas such as Andrew Huang who runs our console hardware security and is very well known in the mod world for consoles. From the physical security, we do everything from card key access to make sure no one can get into our actual, physical servers, to sniffing all packets through our VPGN™ and running an elite intrusion detection scheme and team"
There are a lot of questions about the Phantom. One of those is why Infinium Labs chose to go with an embedded Windows XP system instead of the faster Linux system. "People have asked if we're going to have problems with Microsoft about using XP," explains Roberts. "Actually, we've been working very closely with Microsoft on it. And the other thing is that people have been concerned that XP is not as fast an operating system as Linux. The reason we chose to go with XP embedded is that we have customize that Operating System and are utilizing the XPe Kernel and wrapping our customized gaming OS around it, believe it or not, we have found that it is faster than. There are a lot of things in Windows XPe that we don't need and we are gutting and rewriting the code to our specifications. By the time we're done with it, the system will have our own custom front end which is easy enough for a 3 year old to navigate but advanced enough for any hard core gamers demands. To the average user, they'll never know that it is Windows XPe. The OS right now is in performance tests and loads between 8-15 seconds. So it's very fast when you start the console for the first time and reliable for an always on device."
High end consumer electronic purchasers will now be appeased with the built in functionality to implement this component directly into their high end entertainment systems. With Dolby Digital 7.1 capabilities and an extension cable which allows USB devices to be hooked up from afar without dragging the console across the room to optical inputs and all built in video standards including component video. Roberts stated that it helps to be following the advancements with video display technologies which are allowing for higher resolutions to the home entertainment center. We have built this from a hard core gamer perspective with keyboard, mice, joysticks and other accessories which allow for better gaming controls and these come in wireless options. One of the most advanced features of the device is the built in cable modem, DSL or WIFI cards which auto-configure with your broadband last mile providers and eliminate the need and expense to re-wire your home which is one of the biggest challenges the other consoles have faced. Roberts said "we don't really want to be in the console hardware business and in the future you may see we are working with a large company which has enormous scaling capacities as our subscriber base dictates, or we may be a mix of Pay Per View like what Scientific Atlanta is to the cable industry".
Here is the back view of the Phantom Console which shows the high end consumer design and ease of connecting to a broadband provider:
But ease of use isn't just for the consumers. Infinium Labs has also made it very easy for developers to get their products published on the Phantom.
To the publishers, we're just another distributor," says Terry Nagy, EVP of Content Acquisition. "To the current publishers, we're a way for them to make more money because we can eliminate their packaging costs and high retail distribution costs such as inventory and insurance."
"For game developers and publishers, it's pretty easy," says Nagy. "When they sign up and are partners with the PhantomNet™ and Infinium Labs™, basically they can self publish games directly to our networks. It also allows the game developers to get immediate feedback. They can pre-release a game; say a multiplayer game, to make sure the game is performing correctly. It's a nice way to get a game out there and get it corrected quickly. And the main draw is that the developers have no costs to get the game published on the network. Basically, we take all the porting costs out of their hands, and we'll actually cover the costs for the port to our system, though the majority of games need no porting since the OS is based on the XPe kernel."
One of the problems that Infinium hopes to correct with the Phantom is the shelf life of games. "The bigger problem, when you focus in on it, is that the retail distribution model is broken," explains Roberts. "So when a company like Microsoft goes to figure out what games it is going to distribute, the only games that make sense are the games that are smash hits for them to cover their costs to make any money. Sony and Microsoft don't make money off of the consoles; they make money off the software and accessories. Even though we're eliminating some of their profit centers, the margins that they will make through our delivery centers will be greater because of the reduced distribution costs and longer shelf lives and being able to hold an infinite amount of inventory and also the elimination of piracy adds to there top line revenues.
Even though the Phantom looks to be a serious contender in the video game sector of entertainment, there will still be those who doubt. But Infinium Labs looks to try to calm their fears.
"Currently, we already have commitments for 5,000 titles to come on our system at launch," says Roberts. "Out of these titles, a lot of people are saying that most of these titles are going to be 5 or 10 years old, but surprisingly we are already in discussions and have terms negotiated with several large publishers. And we're not going to get every top title out there, but we know we'll launch with 20 of the top 200 titles at launch, and continue to add those top titles in the months ahead. It's all about money, so the more subscribers we acquire the better the content becomes"
"From the architectural viewpoint, we have built billions of dollars worth of infrastructure at former companies," says Roberts. "We were dealing with very high- end clients at these companies such as my former startup "Savvis Communications". We were partners with companies such as Deloitte and Touché. They would bring their clients in to us and we would spend months architecting robust, fault tolerant, and mission critical infrastructure for Fortune 500 companies. And when you're talking about online financial services and data that companies are reliant on; they could potentially be out of business if their service goes down, and companies like Savvis provide a way to ensure there is never any downtime. We were the first to offer Service Level Agreements or SLA's in the Tier 1 datacom industry. We know how to build the scalability and reliability and I think the difference in why we're going to be successful is because PhantomNet™ has been built by the guys that know how to build infrastructure, not being built by game developers. "
With a 2-3 GHz processor and a 120 gig hard drive, component video, cable modem, RF receiver all built into the system and the best video card on the market, the Phantom looks to make a huge impact on the gaming world.
"We are going to do to the gaming industry what mp3.com has done to the music industry, only we have a better mouse trap which eventually will provide movies, music and e-books on demand" says Roberts.
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..
anders boeken we nooit vooruitgang 
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Nou sorry hoor, maar de consument zal het geen reet schelen. Als de consument om geen 'dynamische' console vraagt, moeten ze er ook geen. We houden van statische consoles. Of niet soms? :strip_exif()/u/28352/spongehenk.gif?f=community)
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