nVidia and Infinium to Partner at CES 132
JonLatane writes "It seems that nVidia is going to allow Infinium to demonstrate their Phantom "game service" at their CES booth. Since its inception, Infinium has proven to be rather belligerent about its product and will probably stay in court for a long time."
Since it doesn't exist (Score:5, Funny)
Truth is funny (Score:2, Insightful)
Ridiculously misleading topic--same as IL and MS (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Ridiculously misleading topic--same as IL and M (Score:4, Interesting)
You know, if the Infinium debacle plays true to form, someday any and all things Infinium might fetch a nice sum on eBay!
Another gaming console (Score:1)
We'll see what Sun can pull out of it's ass
http://www.sun.com/smi/Press/sunflash/2004-10/sun
Re:Another gaming console (Score:1)
Re:Another gaming console (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Another gaming console (Score:1)
That's one of the (very) few things going Infinium's way.
Re:Another gaming console (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Another gaming console (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Another gaming console (Score:1)
And I personally like Steam. They just need to add support for other games and It'd really rock. Automatically updated games acrost your system would rock.
About the DRM... I think it's about time someone came up with something original. Buggy at times, but isn't all new software/buisness approaches. You come up with a better idea fo
Re:Another gaming console (Score:3, Interesting)
Doesn't prevent fair use, allows tracking of infringers.
It allows disconnected clients to work without ever having to connect to the Internet at large, and doesn't depend on having a Windows client to connect to the net.
Re:Another gaming console (Score:1)
It plays PC games (Score:1)
Re:Another gaming console (Score:2)
Re:Another gaming console (Score:2)
It's obvious (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It's obvious (Score:3, Funny)
Infinium stock tumbles (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Infinium stock tumbles (Score:2)
Looks like someone was desperate to prop it up enough to get out.
Re:Infinium stock tumbles (Score:5, Informative)
If you bought last Thursday, and sold on Tuesday, you could have made 240% - a modest $1000 investment would have made you $1431 profit.
If the fax really was a pump-and-dump, it worked.
Re:Infinium stock tumbles (Score:5, Insightful)
It sounds like the buiness plan was somthing like:
1. Start a company
2. Generate lots of publicity about a product
3. Go public.
4. Sell all your stock.
5. Watch your company burn from a private resort in the bahamas.
And when you wasted most of your money on hookers and cars, repeat.
Re:Infinium stock tumbles (Score:2)
Re:Infinium stock tumbles (Score:5, Interesting)
When there is no external information that would cause the stock to move that much, it is very fishy (as others have said, possibly a pump & dump). These things set off alarms over at the SEC. Unfortunately (or fortunately, if you're in on it), they move verrrryyy sloooowwly.
It is quite possible Infinium had nothing to do with this.
Re:Infinium stock tumbles (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Infinium stock tumbles (Score:2)
Looks like someone's been pumping up Infinium's stock using fraudulant junk faxes.
Three splits and not even breaking $2.50 (Score:3, Interesting)
Infinium looks like it might be good for day trading if you have money to throw away. When the stock is trading under $1 and losing money it's a really bad sign. It's also "over the counter" which means it's not actually being traded on the major markets.
I would need really good positive information before putting anything on it. At this point it's pure gambling since the v
Re:Infinium stock tumbles (Score:2)
I laughed so hard and no one else around me knew why. Hard to explain, but it certainly brightened my New Year...
Re:Poor nVidia... (Score:3, Informative)
Ah, thank you for that wonderfully misinformed opinion. This gives me the opportunity to point out the obvious lies, deceit, and chicanery [hardocp.com](thank you Penny Arcade [penny-arcade.com]) produced by the Infinium Labs 'company.' Please, observe the Infinium Labs HQ [hardocp.com]--yes, that is a mail depot.
That's right! (Score:1)
Surely you know by now that being a 'start-up' business in the US is strictly forbidden by law and the USPTO?
Isn't a partnership at all...they're simply a (Score:4, Interesting)
This is just a case of a vendor allowing a client to do some free advertisement for them, even if the thing is vaporhardware.
Re:Isn't a partnership at all...they're simply a (Score:2)
Of course, there's nothing about "partner" or any other special relationship beyond nVidia selling their chips to Infinium in the article (really a press
yah that's pretty much what I meant :) (Score:1)
Does this sound like it's happened before? (Score:5, Funny)
Dunno about this, but... (Score:2)
"Gamers want crisp, vivid images," said Kevin B (Score:1)
Can Someone Explain This To Me (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Can Someone Explain This To Me (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, you get more investment money from suckers by doing this sort of thing, as well as trying to move the stock price if you've pulled in enough suckers to go public.
Look at it this way: Imagine you're broke, and living in your parents' basement. Would you rather:
a) Get a j
Re:Can Someone Explain This To Me (Score:2)
I wonder who might do that... If the Phantom announces an oversized controller designed for kids with hand-gigantism, my suspicions will be confirmed.
strange bedfellows (Score:4, Funny)
But then I realized you know it's probably okay cause Infinium probably won't even show up.... so
Re:strange bedfellows (Score:2)
Ya right... (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www4.tomshardware.com/column/20041011/inde
This reeks of a venture capital marketing strategy to me, but I suppose once the show is over and we see what they have to offer, I might change my mind. At the moment though this press release seems more hype than anything else judging from past experience with Infinium.
More like a Boiler Room op (Score:1)
Re:Ya right... (Score:1)
Now since the 90's some people have figured out that you don't even need a product or service - you can use _hype_ to "finance your
Reading the article... (Score:5, Funny)
Reading the article, it seems that Venture Capitalists have given this company $25M without a product, business plan, or even a physical place of business.
The '90s are BACK, baby!!!
Re:Reading the article... (Score:1)
Re:Reading the article... (Score:1)
Big deal by the time it comes out (Score:1)
Re:This console is doomed to failure! (Score:1)
Maybe that will be the handheld.
And the next day... (Score:5, Funny)
When it comes down to it... (Score:1)
Whatever you say... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Whatever you say... (Score:1)
Why does MS/nVidia care? (Score:3, Interesting)
r/dcviper
Re:Why does MS/nVidia care? (Score:3, Informative)
"Or, why is MS and nV giving up booth space at CES?"
They're probably in the Microsoft Partner Pavilion along with a metric squillion other vendors. Doesn't take much to get space there. It's part of their strategy of showing off how many friends they have, at the same time that they recoup some of the cost of their booth space.
"And, are they concerned about the well known flap between Infinium and [H]ardOCP."
Well known among OCP and /. readers.
I'm a little impressed... (Score:4, Interesting)
The Phantom Game Service will be delivered over broadband to a Windows XP Embedded-based receiver that sits with other devices in the room where family members go for entertainment.
Nearly two dozen leading game publishers have committed to provide content for the Phantom Game Service, including Atari, Codemasters, Eidos and Vivendi Universal.
Show attendees can also see Phantom in the Microsoft Corp. booth in the Central Hall, No. 7145.
Whatever they've got, they've managed to get whatever a "commitment" is worth out of some pretty solid game publishers as well as space in NVIDIA and Microsoft booths at the show. It also looks like they're letting game publishers cut a lot of middle-men out of the way (except for the publisher, of course (like Valve didn't do)) by putting games over broadband. They've got that going for them at least. Before Half-Life 2 went out over Steam this was never on such a scale before.
Plus they've already managed to sue a few people which shows they've got some dice. They'll get along really pretty with the likes of that crowd. Unfortunately though, I remember when it was first announced, and I remember Linux being mentioned. Now it'll sit in a MS booth which may be awesome for them but is a little tragic for everyone who hoped getting a Linux console out there would lead to better Linux game support.
Re:I'm a little impressed... (Score:2)
Is it really vaporware? Doesnt sound like it. (Score:2, Flamebait)
Doesn't sound or act like vaporware.
Re:Is it really vaporware? Doesnt sound like it. (Score:3, Funny)
"Sun Microsoft" (Score:3, Funny)
Wouldn't really matter. To repeat a rehash of an old joke:
Q:"What do you get when you cross Microsoft and Sun?"
A:"Microsoft."
Re:Is it really vaporware? Doesnt sound like it. (Score:5, Insightful)
That press release on Yahoo [yahoo.com] tries to claim he's the creator of the Xbox. I think Seamus Blackley [shacknews.com] may have a different opinion.
The bottom line is this: we have seen JACK from Infinium Labs so far, except for stellar promises, and lawsuits against naysayers who dare to actually poke into the public record background of Kevin Bacchus and his buddies to either substantiate his claims (like where he tries to claim he built the Xbox) or disprove them.
Any goofball with a bunch of seed money can walk up to a company like Nvidia and negotiate an order for a bunch of chips, and parlay that into a joint promotional junket. Whether or not they do anything useful with the chips after they get them is another matter.
If you think that getting a big company like Nvidia to be happy in the same physical space as you is an excellent indicator of "real", try this one on:
A place I once worked had convinced IBM to fly in all of their senior guys in western Canada for our product demo. We had about 20 guys from IBM on hand. Senior managers, VPs, etc. We did the product demo in a building we were planning on buying, but at the moment didn't own, and was in fact still for sale. The company talked a great game to the realtors and current owner of the building as well, so we got to use the building pretty much like it was ours for almost a half year since they were fully convinced we were buying it outright any time now.
The company talked a great game, and the IBM guys drooled so much over our pie-in-the-sky visions we almost had to use a mop. At the end of it all they extended us a bottomless line of credit for whatever we liked, LOANED us an s/390 worth $600,000 so we could "play with a few things on it", and were desperate to get in on the ground floor with us. Becuase, you see, we were going to "Change the World!". The s/390 wasn't even central to our plan, it was just a "Hey maybe we could use the VMs on the s/390 for X" that we tossed out there and IBM practically begged us to take one back to our office and try it out. There were only a dozen people in Canada at the time who even knew how to run Linux VMs on the things, and IBM flew one of them into town just for us.
8 months later, the company laid 65% of its staff off, merged with another failing company, and I believe is currently lurching along zombie-fashion with a single salaried employee today in addition to its two "directors".
But for a few months there, we could have had IBM send down guys to do anything for us because of what we "showed" them we were going to do.
Aaah. The power of vapor.
Believe NOTHING unless you see it actually work. For real. Not a company run "demo".
Re:Is it really vaporware? Doesnt sound like it. (Score:2)
Actually, that isn't quite true. Prototypes have been reviewed in a few places now. For example, see: http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NjU3
I don't like them, but I don't think now they are as vapor-y as they once were.
Re:Is it really vaporware? Doesnt sound like it. (Score:2)
The Phantom you see above is plugged in and "running", although we could never get it to POST.
A machine that doesn't even boot when given out for a review still sounds pretty vaporous to me...
Not even an AP news release... sad. (Score:1)
And for $399, you too can have your custom press releases [ereleases.com] sent to the likes of Yahoo, MSN, and the National Enquirer!
NVIDIA in great position (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:NVIDIA in great position (Score:2)
I'm sure Infinium is buying GPUs for whatever it is they are developing. Whether what they are developing will ever see the market, or if anyone will buy it, is anyone's guess.
That sounds a lot like MCE.. (Score:1)
I have seen a video demonstrating the latest products from "Redmond's finest" and that sounds a lot like Windows Media Center edition.
Of course, if the device needs Windows MCE in order to operate, Microsoft also has to be there to show up their product to the public.
If this is correct, the phantom will only work if windows mce
A simple explanation (Score:1, Redundant)
Add some ethics / Contact Nvidia (Score:4, Informative)
It's another thing to ACTIVELY PROMOTE this type of company by putting them in your trade show booth.
These companies can do better.
Send a little note:
We don't care who you sell your product too, but don't actively promote scum like infinium.
Who's side are you on? The nice guys, or the litigation prone?
Mention the Nvidia CES booth.
I'm including some address below.
Carrie Cowan
Consumer/Games/Partner PR Manager
ccowan@nvidia.com
+1 (408) 486 7330
Brian Burke
Desktop PR Manager
bburke@nvidia.com
+1 (512) 401 4385
Bryan Del Rizzo
Platform Products PR Manager
bdelrizzo@nvidia.com
+1 (408) 486 2772
Infinium is the company that is suing an enthusiest site and its operator personally for $20,000,000 for providing what appears to be basically accurate information about its products.[1]
The gaming / enthusiest market is a core market for Nvidia. Not only does Nvidia have to wake up in the morning knowing they are supporting a litigation prone (and otherwise apparently unsuccesful) company (infinium), but they also have to live with the business decision of actively supporting a company that is engaged in litigation with the very folks who buy and promote their product! And that the litigation appears to be pretty unjustified.
[1]
PLEASE READ THE LINKS IN THE ARTICLE AND REACH YOUR OWN CONCLUSIONS. THESE ARE SIMPLY OPINIONS BASED ON A QUICK REVIEW OF THE LINKED MATERIAL.
Re:Add some ethics / Contact Nvidia (Score:1)
"It's another thing to ACTIVELY PROMOTE this type of company by putting them in your trade show booth."
What type of company? Can you provide a reasoned argument as to why nVidia shouldn't deal with Infinium, one that doesn't lazily cite pre-formed opinions handed down from puerile comic strips and angry loners?
"Who's side are you on? The nice guys, or the litigation prone?"
Do you think for one second that nVidia, or any even vaguely profes
Re:Add some ethics / Contact Nvidia (Score:2)
Probably older then you are if I don't miss my guess given the personal nature of your attacks.
The questions is whether Infinium was really libeled or if they are simply trying to use the legal system to threaten someone publishing accurate information that is unflattering. Given the cases cost money, this is the old SLAPP lawsuit type stuff all over again.
What's interesting is that in this case, we'll get t
Re:Add some ethics / Contact Nvidia (Score:1)
I don't understand the mentality of the responses that Infinium have provoked among the most vocal (i.e. teenage American male) armchair pundits. It's not the case in law that only companies with an established pro
Re:Add some ethics / Contact Nvidia (Score:1)
No matter, bookmark this comment, and come back in a year or two. I think you will find infinium singularly unsuccessful in their litigation for $20 million. And if you're willing to put some cash in place of your opinions and insults, happy to do that as well.
And stop with the red herrings as well. No one has said anything about needing to be rich or swinging millions in marketing.
Results In (Score:2)
Here [hardocp.com] is the copy of the legal document where Infinium admits that the article "does not constitute unfair competition under
I want to be crystal clear here. Fondue commented "Well, it's not exactly ambiguous that Infinium were libelled [sic] - it should be obvious to all but the most credulous observer...". Fondue is flat out wrong.
The rest of their rant is similarly misguided.
Backward strategy (Score:4, Funny)
1. Profit!
2. ???
3. Bankruptcy
follow up press release (Score:2)
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/041230/305038_1
i wonder what "xbox creator" exaclty means here.
"I heard Timothy Roberts, CEO of Infinium Labs..." (Score:2)
More details.. (Score:1)
Re:More details.. (Score:2)
Infinium seeking successful product for spite? (Score:2)
Now it's personal.
Pinch off a loaf (Score:2, Funny)
This thing has a Geforce 5600 in it, and it downloads the game as you play it. It will completely bomb at release, and the only guy that will end up winning is the "CEO". He's made something like $10 million off the investors.
This thing will tank like those Divx players at Circuit City tanked. You could give one as a birthday present, and the receipent would act the same as if you had sqat down and pinched a loaf in the box and wrapped that.
This is what is so awes
Late late late (Score:2)
Yet they are only going to demo it at CES?
Phantom (Score:1)
...Throw away the key. (Score:1)
Pics of Infinium Lab's front door (Score:2, Interesting)
Details:
The office is located on the 3rd floor of the Center Pointe building, which is in central Sarasota, not far from downtown (located at the corner of US 301 and Main St.).
Trivia item: the law firm that Infinium Labs uses takes up the top 2 floors of this build