The Phantom Lives

The long disputed, self-dubbed, super console made it’s debut at
this year’s E3 Expo in Los Angeles. A topic of much ferver, up until
now the unit had never been seen in it’s physical form. Just 7 days
ago, the official web site had a
3D artists rendering and nothing more. A few screens were released of
the menu and proposed games, but looked to the trained eye like nothing
more than a clever Photoshop Job. Our friends over at HardOCP
are embroiled in a legal batter over publicly accesible truths about
the company, Infinium Labs, and it’s founders. It’s claims were mighty
and promised a lot without showing a thing. Play any game, any time
from any system with the Phantom and a broadband connection.

The
words “I Believe” were emblazoned onto the T-Shirts the company
provided to expo goers, but not into their minds. Those that I spoke
with had many doubts. Ongoing presentations displayed what HardOCP
calls “a laptop without a screen”. I couldn’t have put it any
better.The unit looks like the child of a George Forman Grill and an
Apple Powerbook. A single plug allows you to connect the included mouse
and keyboard. No sign of a joystick port, although the keyboard did
have USB plugs on it. The console measures around 24 inches wide, 5
inches tall, and 12 inches deep. If you thought the Xbox was heavy,
this behemoth weighs 10-15 pounds and has the footprint of many home
theatre receivers, making it easily fit into most home entertainment
centers.

The Infinium Labs booth was completely enclosed.
Entering through the glowing blue and silver corridor, expo attendees
were greeted with 5 stations made to look like individual family living
rooms. Each station had any number of couches, coffee tables, lamps and
bean bag chairs aimed towards a flat panel with the Phantom console
sitting either within a cabinet or underneath the TV. Signs adorning
the walls promised free hardware with a 2 year, $199 contract, but no
mention of rental fees or hardware cost, sans contract. A presentor
with a headset mike related the joys and wonders of the product as a
medicine man would his own wares. AMD Athlon 2500, 256 megs of Ram,
high powered Nvidia graphics card and no discs or cartridges to take
care of. Instead, the rep went on, Infinium Labs’ patented technology
allowed their servers to chop the games up into smaller bits, compress
those bits and finally send them to the gamer’s console. “We’ve been
getting an approximate 10 minute download over standard broadband
connections”, the bubbly brunette spouted, ” because you are only given
the parts of the game you immediately need.” Her example: “Within 10
minutes you could be playing the first level of Halo 2, all while the
2nd and 3rd levels are downloading in the background.”

Wait…what?!!?

I
instinctively inquired “How can you offer a non-pc game over your
networks, and does this mean that Microsoft is going to license their
games to you?”

She looked like a deer in the headlights of a
mac truck. “I didn’t mean that, no. I was just using that as an
example. We will not be announcing official licenses and games until
September of this year.” At this point I was thinking that this rep
either slipped, or she really didn’t know what she was talking about.
Previous screenshots released on the web in the last year have shown
people playing Metroid Prime, a GameCube exclusive title, on the
Phantom. The official site up until recently had images of the proposed
menus with a Metroid screenshot gracing it’s preview screen.

In
fact, what we were presented with was a clean, white interface with
Shop, Play and User Settings on the main screen. This design was a far
cry from those web spread preview shots depicting a grungy dark techno
feel. The Shop area was a scrollable list of games for rent. Infinium
Labs now describes their console as Gaming On Demand, and this screen
provided a short description of the game, it’s logo and the cost
associated with the rental. We were told that a few games would be
free, but initially a rental fee covering 3-5 days would be required in
addition to your monthly subscription fee.

Back in the Play
menu, we were shown the library of titles that had already been
downloaded and were ready to play. Presented here were a few of the
free games being offered. Games like WordWhomp and QBz, that anyone
with even a low end PC and an internet connection have access to.
Standing out amongst the Java and Flash games though was the Unreal
Tournament 2004 demo. It ran smoothly enough at what appeared to be a
1024 x 768 resolution, but any computer quoted with the specs mentioned
above, it should. When asked if Epic was going to license any of it’s
games to the system, I was treated again with the answer of the
announced titles and licensee’s in September. Just that Epic was “kind
enough” to let them use their demo for presentation purposes.

All
network and streaming issues aside, the system seems bound for doom. In
all reality, the Phantom console is a living room PC that cannot be
upgraded. Console developers create games that tailor to the unchanging
hardware that exists in that particular platform. Console gamers aren’t
burdened with having to buy a better video card, bigger hard drive or
faster RAM in order to play their games. The Phantom though is a PC,
running Microsoft Windows and Windows software. PC developers have no
incentive to adhere to the limitations of this newcomer. Instead, PC
developers build for the latest and greatest, often causing PC gamers
to upgrade their system every few months to keep up. It’s not hard to
see how even after a year, the Phantom’s hardware will be struggling to
keep up with the high end games that players are dropping their
paychecks for.

The Phantom may very well find it’s niche as did
the N-Gage, but to gain the core gamer audience is going to be a near
impossibility. We’ll keep reporting the news, but don’t expect a full
review of the system anytime soon.

One final note, it seems that even the Phantom can’t escape the Blue Screen Of Death.