Life after death: Phantom game console remembered in design mockups
By Darren Murph 
posted July 26th 2010 5:19PM
posted July 26th 2010 5:19PM
posted July 26th 2010 5:19PM
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Outrageously appropriate name for a dead console.
@d0mth0ma5 although is it now a Zombie?
@d0mth0ma5
Last night I was doing shisha on Edgware Road and I saw a red Rolls-Royce Phantom with the numberplate '1', and it was a UK plate. It's worth more than the car!
@d0mth0ma5 a vaporware console you mean? it was never actually born :P
Looks like more of a xbox 360 phantom
I still have my Phantom slinky given out at E3 either that year or the year before. It's a prized piece of show swag for me.
Wheres the Notorious BIG album cover that so fittingly fits this article guys?
Hold the presses! There were *actual* people working on Phantom??!
And all this time I thought Infinium Labs was just an empty office employing only a receptionist.
I've never even heard of that console.
@Ninjakid4
You were probably sperm at the time.
@Blackstar Copied from me >.>
@MoonWalkerCTE
Lol, you think so? From where/when?
@Blackstar the future, obviously.
Were you sent here to kill us, or to warn us about the coming apocalypse?
@Riley
Both. I promised to do you last. :P
It was to early the Next Generation will be like the Phantom.
@wisausnk You'd have to be stupid to think so.
Engadget recently had an article about how 14-25 million americans dont have broadband
Sony said PS3 games are too big to download, that you could buy a car, drive to the store and back in less time
Sony said what they learned from PSP Go is that gamers prefer physical mediums, and most polls show 75% agree with that
There are entire countries without PSN/Live access
Then there's China, where all systems in there were smuggled, going download only would mean no chinese customers
You really think they'd willingly give up all those customers/countries? And the people who pay more for collector's editions?
PSP2 wont even be download only, let alone next gen consoles. PS3 games are already encroaching on 50GB, next gen will be even bigger. Imagine how long it'll take to download them, AND how big of a harddrive you'd need.
@Extinction I don´t think that im Stupid, maybe not the PS4 or the Next Xbox will be a Download Konsole Only. But you can be shure that this will be comming, and Games will be cut in Episodes you pay for seperate.
Ha ha - I still have a Phantom glow in the dark t-shirt from E3 - I love it - and the keyboard/mouse hybrid thing worked surprisingly well.
Console? That's a PC lol
Steam + PC = Phantom
Wow it's been year sense I have thought about the phantom, I think the lawsuit against hardocp was the last I read anything about it.
Does this mean that there isn't anyone still "working on it" anymore?
I remember seeing that at E3 back in then as well. I wasn't too impressed with what I saw (even though the keyboard/mouse setup was nice).
I remember seeing it at E3 years back.
I walked away from it thinking "Ok, this is a scam" because first off their "demonstration" was just a nice looking menu that you can navigate around in, but couldn't do anything.
And the core concept behind the console required game devs to recode their games to work with the Phantom, which I highly doubted they would. And sho'nuff it was phony.
anyone have a feeling onLive is actually the console revived?
Yeah, I remember reading about this thing back in the day and just assuming it was some kind of venture capital scam. All the press surrounding it was just buzzwords and empty promises.
I remember the same when it came out, seemed like a scam to me also.. its been so long, completely forgotten about, till now..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Phantom_%28game_system%29
I remember signing up for the beta of this thing, then getting pissed when I didn't get an email saying I was in when they were supposed to be sending them out, then learning that no one got them.
Now I just wonder why I even cared so much to begin with.
I hate to be the guy that speaks with knowledge on this subject, but here it goes. The hardware featured in this article is by Robrady, which was the first gen prototype and was complete and total crap. The prototype that was shown at E3, which included the lapboard, was a collaborative design effort between Teague (http://www.teague.com/) and Phantom employees. I have some early photos and renders here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/futileboy/sets/72157594190734497/
The were some great debates over at the now defunct Dricas World forums about this thing back then. Good times.
I still have a pamphlet handed out at a game convention in Philly back in 2004 or so for this system. They had a pathetic booth.
It was a novel idea, but basically any HTPC destroys it.
Seriously, having a PC with Steam is infinitely better than their sales model, and didn't require some stupid custom box with custom controllers and whatnot.
As for the person complaining about downloadable games, this system isn't the PS3. It wasn't planning on 25 gig+ size downloads. Give it a rest, already. Games don't have to be that freakin' huge to be great, it just means it's loaded with uncompressed HD footage, mostly. There's plenty of great codecs out there to make a game image smaller, but BD games have to just be uncompressed because they can be. My SNES roms are less than a few megs each and give me more joy than 90 percent of my current gen games.
I proudly own a PS3 and will buy a 50 gig BD ROM if it's worth the 59.99 to plop down, but I'd rather sit around and wait for it to drop in price and play a ton of awesome games that are only 9.99 to download or less. Or even better, actually PLAY the library of games on my past gen systems I've still not caught up with.
Downloading is the future, whether everyone likes it or not. I love my physical discs and am a huge collector, but it costs way less for a small developer with some actual UNIQUE ideas to make their game download only than shell out 60 bucks for some Hollywood big budget physical medium game that isn't worth it for the 10 hours of playtime.
Try being in a band and affording to put every album out on CD instead of just being on iTunes and see how you feel. Try being a movie producer and putting out all of your projects on DVD or BluRay... it just doesn't make marketing sense at all if you're a small company.
Phantom was a cool idea but would never have taken off unless the market saturation at the time for broadband excelled even what it is today.
@DeAthWaGer dito
Sorry, this story isn't nerd enough until someone takes the specs and makes a fully functional console as a labour of love over the space of 10 years.
"admittedly handsome box"
Says a lot.
I used to work for Robrady Design, when I lived in FL. My brother also worked there, he was working there when they were working on the Phantom. Got a chance to play it, in that stage it was pretty much just a pc in a box, I remember playing a couple first person shooters like Unreal Tournament on it. Phantom's headquarters was about 20 minutes from my house.
(Politely waits for someone to respond with "Cool Story Bro")
@Paul J :: Cool story Bro
What a tackie piece of crap. Looks like an oversized Bush alarm clock with some knock-off alienware trim..