Infinium Labs Owes $4 Million, Requires $68 Million to Stay Afloat

nz17 writes "Looks like Infinium Labs, 'maker' of the Phantom game console, can't manage its debt. According to GameSpot, the company's recently filed Securities and Exchange Commission papers show that Infinium currently owes $4 million as a capital deficiency, but requires an estimated additional $68 million to continue work until the end of 2006. However, Infinium remains chipper in the face of oppression, as it estimates its first year of sales will garner $35 million in revenue. Will the Phantom console launch on the projected date of November 18th, 2004, or will the system live up to its name?"

Heh, we all know

[shfted!]

Not that I want to destroy their chipper spirit or anything, but Infinium just needs to give up the ghost and die -- or phantom as the case may be.

$35mill?

[obeythefist]

Let's play with the numbers. $35,000,000 in one year. Let's say they're selling PC's that play games for about $500 each (reasonable price for a desktop gaming PC on the very low end). So, game sales and royalties aside, they'd need to sell 70,000 consoles to make up that revenue.

That's not a totally unreaslitic figure - I guess there are at least 70,000 suckers in the world, although I imagine that there will be fewer sales and more revenue from subscriptions or whatever model the Phantom is supposed to use for gaming.

The problem is that I can't see $35M revenue (not profit) paying Infiniums costs or paying any of that $68M debt. How exactly do you rack up $68M in debt developing a PC anyway? The personal computer is pretty straightforward as it is... most of the work has already been done.

Needless to say, they also have a poor reputation from that legal fight with Kyle earlier on, that won't help them get sales because reputation counts for a lot in the gaming industry.

Phantom Launch

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd be very, very surprised if the Phantom launched in November as anything approaching what we'd recognise as a games console. The idea of it having a proper games library at launch, or indeed at any point in the short-to-mid-term future is preposterous. As I understand it, the idea is that you'll be able to download and play PC games on it, paying both a monthly subscription and the cost of the actual PC game to do so. Leaving aside all the obvious problems that potential customers are going to have with this, I just don't see how the system can work.

After spending several years in a pretty much static state, the minimum specs for PC games have finally resumed their upwards march. Farcry, Unreal Tournament 2004 and, in particular, Doom 3, have finally forced many people into upgrading PCs which hadn't needed it since soon after Quake 3 came out. From what I've seen, the Phantom's hardware is inferior to that needed to run any of the above games well on a current PC. Admittedly, the resolution will be a lot lower, as you'll presumably be playing on a TV, but even so, the Phantom's going to be obsolete with regards to mainstream PC games pretty much as soon as it's released.

Then we have the issue of bugs and hardware compatibility. The X-Box is also built on PC hardware, and it's not really suffered from these. A console game having a major bug generally warrents a slashdot games story devoted to it; a PC game NOT having major bugs at release probably warrents the same. Will the Phantom be clever enough to be able to automatically patch any games the user has bought for it? Moreover, while the X-Box can count on its developers making games specifically for its hardware, the Phantom, which will apparently run full-blown PC games, has no such guarantee. Any PC gamer will at some point come across the situation where he gets a game that doesn't like a specific bit of his hardware, necessitating a specific patch, driver update or even hardware change. With the battle between ATI and Nvidia really getting into swing, it's perfectly possible that we'll see deliberate hardware incompatibilities starting to crop up. How is the Phantom going to react to this?

If the Phantom ever does actually appear, the only role I can see for it is as a kind of extension of current "digiboxes" and the like, running simple games that will be covered in the montly subscription price. How many people will be willing to pay for this? I know I wouldn't...

Re:$35mill?

[obeythefist]

True, Infinium would be screwed if they didn't have some decent publishers/titles available for Phantom when the time comes. So instead they had better hope that $68M got them some decent publishers or they're really stuffed. And some of the bigger game houses are already "owned" by MS, Sony, Nintendo. They won't be very obliging about helping more competition into their market. I wouldn't suggest people invest in Infinium right now.

Re:$35mill?

[rudy_wayne]

and developing and mass producing a custom piece of hardware, even one based on off the shelf components, is pricey

Huh??

The only thing "custom" is the case. It takes some money to design and mass produce the case, but after that, it's just a matter of paying people to stuff standard off-the-self parts into it.

It's the CEO

[solitarian]

No one seems to be pointing out that the "brains" behind the company has a history of creating then bankrupting companies. I assume he is an excellent marketer, or knows a lot of rich morons, who are willing to fund his ideas.
He probably knew that Infinium would go belly-up, but he gets a nice paycheck until it does.

How exactly are they planning on attractin anyone?

[Moo Moo Cow of Death]

So let me get this straight...

-They have NO hype for commercials, internet advertisements or even the occasional popup.
-They have NO credibility in the gaming community overall
-No major, minor or even INDEPENDENT names that I know of have backed them or stated they're planning to in the future
-Their CEO is known to be, by and large, an asshat and possibly the only person the company
-They have a couple million in debt with all the above and their plan is to produce a console which in order for us to keep playing on they HAVE to stay in business

So how exactly did they plan on going anywhere except to perhaps Cuba? Africa? Some other country that won't export them?

I've garnered most of my opinions on this from hardocp, PA and other misc sources btw

Re:Careful

[WormholeFiend]

yea, but they're already out of money, and lawyers don't work for free.

The Motley Fool Phantom Ads...

[ronfar]

Phantom: The game console I've primarily seen marketed in banner ads on the Motley Fool.com

Hmm... well, I guess people trading stocks have lots of disposable income to spend on game consoles, that's why they advertised there, right?