New Games Console Announced

[Calen]

Seems another new Games Console will appear at the end of the year from a company called    Infinium Labs.
No information as yet has been posted on the Hardware specs but they our saying it will outperform any Games Console on the market today.


See below:

Longboat Key, Florida – January 20, 2003 - A Tampa Bay area technology company, Infinium Labs Corporation, will develop and market a new game console that will outperform the XBOX, Sony Playstation II, and GameCube.

Press Release


About Infinium Labs:

Infinium Labs is the leading provider of software and services that enable partners to deliver revenue-generating digital video games through its Phantom technology. The Company also provides Phantom branded software technologies and service solutions to manufacturers of set-top boxes, home-media servers and networked-entertainment appliances, and last mile broadband distribution companies.

[SlimJim]

> [...] but they our saying it will outperform any Games
> Console on the market today.
 
So what else is new?
.
SlimJim

[System]

Performance, feh! Performance only matters to idiot kids who don't know any better, but even those idiot kids won't buy it if its not fashionable, and doesn't have any good software.

I feel compelled to share this with you, from Infiniums website

Infinium Labs Corporation has emerged in 2003 as a leader in the converging Internet, digital entertainment and consumer electronics markets.

Thats right in just 22 days Infinium labs has emerged as the leader in the converging Internet, digital entertainment and consumer electronics market.

I'm wondering whether this is because such a market doesn't even exist, if you count the markets separately Infinium certainly haven't been heard of in any of them.

Sorry but if Microsoft has problems getting into the market when they can throw billions of money at it, some punk ass start-up is going to fail (un)spectacularly.


The more I read on their site the more I laugh."First Broadband console ever" apparently, I thought about this knowing full well the dreamcast held this title, not to mention the Xbox and PS2 getting their act together lately, but then I realised they probably mean it can't work without broadband. You probably have to pay to play games which are then downloaded via broadband stored on a local Hard drive so you can play and then they will expire.

Apart from that, the designs show the phantom being larger and uglier than the X-Box, no market penetration in asia then, the controller looks more uncomfortable than a week in a small crate with a couple of porcupines.

50,000 games? Sounds like the kind of thing Bill McEwan would say. Which makes me think emulation, because there is no system alive with that kind of back catalogue, not even the playstation.

It also makes claims about children being able to play on the internet safely, being able to play games with PC users...

I'm going out on a limb here but this sounds like a PC in a box with a content service delivered by broadband.  Essentially a set-top box made out of a PC. Kinda like the thing AOL would like to do.

In the end its still a STB and history has shown, over and over, and Over no one wants one of those.

Makes you wonder really, "Phantom" would be a great name for a piece of Vapourware.

[Calen]

What goes around comes around, they release this say end of year/early 2004, by that time PS3 will be almost upon us which will be touted as probably 30 times more powerfull than anything else, nintendo will have there next gen console in the pipeline which wont just be as powerfull but will have some great fun games to play, M$ and there X-Box will hopefully just disapear.

While not true for all games but for the majority, the look of the games rules over anything else these days, playabilty is the last thing they seem to care about. More true in the PC world than anywhere else.

[Zadoc]

Unfortunately, superior hardware means nothing without spectacular games EXCLUSIVE to the console.

Remember the Dreamcast?  Or a bit more close to home, the CD32 with it's mediocre CDTV/A500 ports...

Right now in console sales/ownership more people flock to the PS2 rather than the superior consoles like GameCube and X-Box.  Why?  Backwards compatability with the thousands of PS1 games and exclusive rights to GTA3, as well as the majority of top selling new games always getting a PS2 port unlike rivals NGC and M$X-box.

Superior hardware in a console without good games is useless..I guess we wait and see, but I don't expect much.

[Calen]

The one thing that Nintendo just like a lot of older Amiga game developers done in the past was playability first, some of those most simple looking games have been the most fun to play on.
On Amiga we have an example being SWOS and countless others, on Nintendo you have something like Super Monkeyball which keeps you coming back for more, Monkeyball was so simple and crisp gfx wise that the GBA port looks virtually identical to its bigger brother.

But i guess its sometimes catch 22 thing, Games with great gfx sales more than anything it seems, leaves less time for them to add the as much as possible playability in there.
I sometimes in the past have judged a book by its cover and been caught out, im glad these days i get more a chance to try a demo..which has saved me lots of money :-)

[Calen]

On a slightly different note, i see that Speedball 2 has been released for the GBA and quite a few other Amiga games for it our in the pipeline. ala Wings, Gods, Robocod  & Payback to name a few. Again Nintendo get quality games for there system ;-)
All we need is a version of SWOS/Turican2 and a few other Amiga classics and i may just get one for those long journeys  :-D

Wouldnt it be great if Amiga.inc had the rights to all these old classics and could trade with Nintendo, You give us this title for next gen Amiga , we give you this one for your GBA. ahmmm :-)

[MikeB]

I totally agree.

If Infinium Labs cannot even get their own website to work properly then what chance have they got with a broadband console.  

Focusing on the Amiga, Amiga Inc need to get Hyperion Entertainment to grab the rights for Last Ninja 4 and maybe some old classic killer gameplaying C64 games.
Graphics are great but playablilty is the one thing which will get people to buy and buy.

check out this link:
http://lastninja.lemon64.com/ln4.htm

[Calen]

Focusing on the Amiga, Amiga Inc need to get Hyperion Entertainment to grab the rights for Last Ninja 4 and maybe some old classic killer gameplaying C64 games

I wish, I totaly loved the trilogy on the C-64, the first was probably one of the first games i had played on it when i got mine and it had me hooked from start to finish, ahmm took some time though :-)
All fine games which for me had it all, Playability, Gfx and superb music, i really couldnt ask for more.

Those guys at System 3 sure knew there stuff :-) I had the pleasure at the time to get to talk with one of the lead coders on LN3, i was very young and quite chuffed back then about it ;-)

[Tomas]

Yes this is definitely just a bad hoax.... On one of their page they say there is allready 36xxx games avaliable... on some other page, they claim they got over 50000 games + over 5000 multiplayer games ready...

And this company has only existed for a month?? hah

probably some 50000 games in 1....  ;-)

[Salup]

It is probably just a Windows PC with some nice hardware in it.

[Hammer]

What goes around comes around, they release this say end of year/early 2004, by that time PS3 will be almost upon us which will be touted as probably 30 times more powerfull than anything else, nintendo will have there next gen console in the pipeline which wont just be as powerfull but will have some great fun games to play, M$ and there X-Box will hopefully just disapear.

Refer to X-BOX NEXT or X-Box II projects. Never underestimate MS in terms technological pace i.e. MS is not CBM.

It was rumored that both ATI and nVidia was going to bid for next contract.

It was also rumored that MS was preparing to clone X-Box hardware to compete with Sony's Playstation market. That is, reuse the massive X86 clone war tactic to destroy the completion (i.e. AmigaOS, MacOS, Atari’s TOS, Acorns RiscOS and ‘etc’).

X-Box hardware cloned market may mirror Windows CE market i.e. single purpose based Windows powered devices.

One can see the MS’s market segment plans i.e.
1. Hand-helds,
2. Desktop.
3. Consoles.
4. Phones.
5. 32bit Severs.
6. 64bit Severs.

[Calen]

It was rumored that both ATI and nVidia was going to bid for next contract.

Yeah i heard something about that also, sigh

One can see the MS’s market segment plans i.e.
1. Hand-helds,
2. Desktop.
3. Consoles.
4. Phones.
5. 32bit Severs.
6. 64bit Severs..

7. World domination