Infinium Phantom: Pointless or the future?

[Devilbod]

For those of you that don't know about it :

Infinium Labs has announced details of the hardware in its Phantom game console, which has been publicly unveiled for the first time at the E3 Expo in Los Angeles and is set to launch by the end of the year.

The "game receiver," which downloads games from a broadband Internet connection onto an internal 40gb hard disc and has no ports for external media such as CDs, DVDs or memory cards, is set to use components from AMD and NVIDIA in its design.

An AMD Athlon 2500+ processor will lie at the heart of the system, along with an NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700 Ultra graphics chipset, with 128mb of on-board graphics RAM - making the Phantom into a PC system just slightly behind the current cutting edge specification.

It's certainly enough power to run key upcoming games such as Half-Life 2 and Doom III with good graphical quality and framerate, and should allow the system to continue to play high-end PC games for at least a couple of years.

Earlier this week, it was revealed that Infinium plans to give away the Phantom for free to people who sign up to the Phantom Game Service content delivery system, which is expected to cost around $30 per month when it launches this November in the United States.

The question is do you like the idea or is this one giant turkey?

I'm not sure but I'm thinking turkey , but thats because of all the hassle PC's can be with Drivers and ect. I'm just not sure it will work...

Oh and here is what it looks like :
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content...e=new&aid=3416
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content...e=new&aid=3419

[Blub2k]

I'm thinking along the lines of MMORPG's that are subscription based and the fact that no one I know subscribed but worked with hacked versions.
How long before someone invents a hack that connects to illegal servers with free content? My guess would be not long.

[Da Hoe]

Personally I cant see it being a sucess. Well all know what a pain in the rear PC's can be getting games to work properly. And unlike every other console, it will be running software not designed for a specific set of hardware.

Roll on the new driver downloads and patches to cure the console BSOD

[schrickvr6]

i read on [H] a while back that it's all a con to get money out of investors...apparently there is no phantom

[SilentDeath]

downloadin games over broadband isnt going to be fast.....

but it has fixed hardware, there would be no driver or setup issues with the console, that would be assuming the gaems were designed specificly for them, instead they are designed for pc's and playable on both, there will be bugs needing fixing, but no more than normal pc games.
However it has its own content delivery system, the games played on it wont be the same as the ones you buy in shops, this gives the developers to modify them [with ease, as no porting required] to work well on that specific hardware the console uses.

I think it would heavly depend on how its implemented and what games it will have, aswell as how it is marketed, for it to be a sucsess.

[Aaron]

I wonder if you'll be able to mod it, Xbox style?