INFINIUM LABS (fka IFLB)

[rainbow898]

Does the Phantom Live?
written by Coury Turczyn on Tuesday, June 07, 2005

Infinium's President and COO Kevin Bachus Defends His Phantom Console From Critics Who Doubt its Existence
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At 2004’s E3, Infinium had a strong presence, but this year it didn’t have a booth, causing more rumors. What was the strategy behind that decision?

Unfortunately, I forgot to set my alarm clock…

Well, I think it’s really hard for people to understand exactly how expensive it is to do a huge booth like that—it was very expensive. It was the best investment I think we’ve made in the company because there was tremendous skepticism about whether there was really even a product or a company, and it gave us an opportunity to come out and show as many people as possible what it was—in one stroke, it allowed us to start working with publishers and retailers. This year, as we start getting closer to launch, it was a lot less important for us to do this big, grand presentation to everybody at E3, and much more important for us to continue to working with out partners. We were at E3; we weren’t on the show floor, and we didn’t have a big booth. But it was much more important for us to sit down one on one with our partners and talk with them about our plans, and do the last-minute tweaks to get ready for a launch, than it was to do a “Hey, look at us” kind of thing. That said, it’s been a little surprising and kind of disappointing to see the reaction to it, so next year as we sit down and start looking at what we want to do at E3, I’ll certainly be thinking more about how it’s perceived. Having launched a product (by then) will again change the way that we look at the trade show and its importance, and what kind of presentation we want to make there.


Speaking of launching, do you have a new time frame in mind yet?

We do. It’s funny—Microsoft announced that Xbox 360 will be coming soon, but there’s no launch date yet. And everybody sort of has given the folks there the benefit of a doubt because they have launched a service, and because we had set a launch date there’s more skepticism about it. But because of that, I consider the bar to be even higher. I have a very specific launch date in mind. I want to make sure that when we come out and announce that, that there’s a lot of stuff around that gives people confidence in that date. So I want to let a couple things cook for a couple more weeks before I come out and say, “Okay, it’s this date, it’s this price, and it’s these retailers.” I could tell you the date, but of course the next question is, “Why are you going to make that date when you didn’t make the last date?” I’d rather have answers to all those questions than just one of them.


Have you beefed up the system specs in the last year?

We have. But they’re not going to be dramatically different. Because, again, we don’t start with from the perspective of “what’s the best hardware we can build?” We start from the perspective of “how do we make sure we can run the widest range of games down the road?” The hardware is going to be in people’s entertainment centers for two or three years or longer. We want to make sure that the games released down the road can run. That’s a tough thing to be able to think about, but because we’re taking games from the PC world and making them available in a way that’s much more console friendly, we’re going to take advantage an interesting dynamic in the PC world: Although PC games require fairly high-performance hardware to run with all the bells and whistles, they run acceptably on a very wide range of machines because not everybody has the latest and greatest PC. Think about it: If you bought a home PC today, would you expect that system to be working three or four years down the road? Of course. Most people aren’t going to replace their home system every three years. The game developers know that, and they know they have to support a wide range of systems even if that means sacrificing some of the features and functionality. So we can take advantage of that and provide a wide range of games. So, yes, we are going to make some small modifications to the specs. Because we’ve had an extra year to cook it, we’re going to be able to take advantage of a newer generation of graphics processors. Is it going to be radically different? No, of course not. It’s going to be the difference between last year’s PC and this year’s PC.


Are the pricing schemes going to be similar to what was previously outlined?

We’ve had a lot of feedback from consumers about pricing. One of the things I thought was, “Okay, we’ve got to go the cable television model,” where you subscribe to the service and you get the hardware. What we’ve been told is that consumers look at this more like satellite radio—they’re willing to pay a little for the hardware, but they’re not as interested in signing up for a long-term contract. That seems to be the biggest turn-off for people. But the subscription fee is very important. The money has to balance out in the end, one way or another. In the last year, we’ve tried a lot of pricing levels with consumers: What if the hardware’s completely free, but you had to sign up for two years? What if instead of that, you paid some paid money and didn’t have to sign up for a contract at all? There’s a way to see how people react to this so when you do launch you don’t have egg on your face, and say, “Oh, we guessed completely wrong.” It will be different. Hopefully, it will be seen by consumers as better because we’re taking our cue from what we’ve been hearing from consumers.


Do you expect to feel any vindication once you actually see the system on store shelves?

It’s disappointing to see people say nasty things about you and the people you work with, but this is the second time I’ve been through that. Look at what people said about Xbox initially: “Oh, it’s going to be a port box, it’s going to be crap, nobody’s going to buy it, it’s going to crash, blah, blah, blah.” All the same stuff. So I’m kind of used to it; I’ve developed a thick skin as a result. But I’m not in it for vindication or revenge or anything like that. What I will feel when we launch the service is a lot of pride. This is something that I think is really cool, and I want other people to get their hands on it and to feel the same way about it. The thing that gets me up in the morning every day is the idea of people actually using it and liking it.

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