Infinium's Phantom a no-show at E3

Infinium Labs president Kevin Bachus has reiterated that the Phantom game service will launch later this year, after the system's non-appearance at E3 prompted further speculation that the product may never make it onto the market.

The Phantom is designed to let consumers purchase and download console games in the comfort of their own homes. Along with an initial layout for the hardware, a subscription fee of $19.95 per month is payable for a minimum of two years.

Infinium Labs unveiled the product at E3 2004 and it was nominated for best hardware of the show award. However, since then, several launch dates have been missed and now the company itself seems to be unsure as to the future of the Phantom.

On April 20, the company filed a report with the Securities and Exchange Commission stating that another $11.5 million is required before a launch can go ahead.

The report stated: "There is a high likelihood that sufficient capital will not be available... And the launch date will again shift and/or the company will go out of business."

But in an interview with US website tradersnation.com last week, Infinium president Kevin Bachus stated that the Phantom will indeed launch in the US "later this year."

He went on to say the company was confident of the machine's money-spinning potential, identifying "three streams of revenue" - the hardware, the content and the subscription fee.

"Between those three revenue streams, we feel very confident that we're going to be able to not only deliver value to the consumer but to our shareholders as well," Bachus said.

Infinium also says that product development and testing is "near complete", and has confirmed that more than 20 publishers - including Atari, Vivendi and Eidos - have already signed up to supply content.

Infinium was unavailable for further comment at the time of writing.

People are expecting console market "savvy", and the way they are going about this console they will never get that. These are some blokes who had an interesting idea, not console market veterans. The way they are going about this (Paypal...wow) may be disturbing to some, and this is what will be there doom. Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo would nothing but love fanboys to kill this system because Infintium are doing things the big guns would never do.

Too bad. If 11.5M of us would drop a $1 in a Paypal account it would be nice to see how it goes. Being how this would never happen, this idea maybe dead. I really don't see a 3rd party coming in and saying "hey, we'll financially back your launch". It just doesn't work that way unless they have some killer app(s) that people will flock to.

R.I.P., Infintium Labs. Cool ideas, I await the rip-off of them because that's the way this market works.