New Financial Woes, This Time Infinium Labs

[BigDirty]

To simply put it, Infinium only has ~$125K in available cash, and a working capital deficency of ~$4 million. Compound this with expecting operating costs of $68 million and expected sales of $35 million, trouble is brewing.

The entire article:

SEC Filing Reveals Possible Infinium Cash Crisis
The latest Securities and Exchange Commission filing for Infinium Labs, makers of the Phantom games console, reveals that the company has only $134,226 in its bank account, and a working capital deficiency of $3,962,226. The discrepancy between these two amounts suggests that the company may be drastically short of working capital.

By its own estimates, the company will have operating costs of over $68 million during the next twelve months, and plans to sell only $35 million worth of product. However, the company has stated that "start-ups often push the limits of their balance sheets" and that it "intends to pursue negotiations with its bridge lenders to cover their notes to equity to reduce each outlays for the debt service."

Further on in the statement is the admission that, "As reflected in the accompanying financial statements, the Company is in the development stage with no sales, a working capital deficiency of $3,962,226. This raises substantial doubt about its liability to continue as a going concern. The ability of the Company to continue as a going concern is dependent on the Company's ability to raise additional capital and implement its business plan."

The Phantom gaming service is currently due to go live on 18th November 2004 in the US.

[sblymnlcrymnl]

Big fucking suprise.

[WildWop]

I don't think I can even feign surprise at this one. The Phantom was doomed to fail from the moment it was conceived. A flawed business model generally leads to financial breakdown.

[daphatty]

I have to agree. Set top gaming services have had a hard time carving a niche and making money. The only successful ones have had to piggyback or support an already established market: Xbox Live, Sega Channel. Phantom was doomed to fail from inception.

[mtxbass1]

Agreed. No big suprise here. I'm wondering how they lasted this long.

[WhipSmartBanky]

At least they'll be spared the embarassment of actually trying to launch this piece of shit...

[Squirms]

At least they'll be spared the embarassment of actually trying to launch this piece of shit...
:rofl:
How True

[Grave_Addiction]

Phantom was doomed to fail from inception.

Actually, the Phantom has some very good ideas, and I think it could be successful..

If you think about it, downloadable games should be the future. We wouldn't have to worry about any of the manufacturing costs or any of that hogwash. That means cheaper games for us.

Plus, their whole keyboard and mouse gizmo is really useful.

If there was a legitimate company that brought the Phantom out, but instead of playing PC games and played console games, I think they could be successful with it.

What they really need are some killer exclusive games.

[Trakan]

At least they'll be spared the embarassment of actually trying to launch this piece of shit...

Lol, that's a good point.

[ngxbox2004]

It hasn't even lauched, has it?

[bhfgamer]

Thisll be the N-Gage of home systems. Nobody will buy this because the technology is too new

[hutno]

I dont think it'll ever make it to shelves. $65 million involves a lot of eager investors and I dont think they'll find many with the state of the VG market and the present state of game development

[Alpha2]

Phantom was doomed to fail from inception.

Actually, the Phantom has some very good ideas, and I think it could be successful..

If you think about it, downloadable games should be the future. We wouldn't have to worry about any of the manufacturing costs or any of that hogwash. That means cheaper games for us.

Plus, their whole keyboard and mouse gizmo is really useful.

If there was a legitimate company that brought the Phantom out, but instead of playing PC games and played console games, I think they could be successful with it.

What they really need are some killer exclusive games.

Having a good idea a reliable set of people to produce said idea are two different things. The way it sounds to me these guys have totally MISPLACED 3 million dollars, and if it's not misplaced it's being used inappropriately. I'll tell you what the first mistake Infinum made was; Hardware. The Phantom is NOT as user friendly as a console so the core audiance would have been PC gamers, they would have been better off putting thier money into comming up with a data protection code that would allow them to do the gam subscription through PC and deliver the content to THAT instead.

Console gamers are generally more materialistic than PC gamers, they want something concrete for their money where as a PC gamer half the time wouldnt mind pulling an entire game off the internet through broadband.

But anyway this was pretty much expected and predicted by everyone that bothered to read up on this farce of a buisness venture a year ago. If this DOES make it's ship date it'll have poorer distribution and visibility than the super overpriced PSX "home entertainment device/center"

[Kaijufan]

Im not supprised that this has happened. Downloadable games may be the wave of the future, but its a wave that wont hit for years.

[Sartori]

Im not supprised that this has happened. Downloadable games may be the wave of the future, but its a wave that wont hit for years.

Better not. I'm not down with that. I'm very materialistic about my games and related merchandice.

[daphatty]

"Phantom. Do you still believe?"

[Nibi]

It looks like all the money they had went into the panties that had their logo on them. The guys behind this company have a history of doing this kind of shit, apparently the dot bomb hasn't hit them yet and they think they can keep dodging it. Just makes you wonder if throwing around some photoshopped pics and some witty industry slang is alll it takes to make a few mil.

[Kaijufan]

Im not supprised that this has happened. Downloadable games may be the wave of the future, but its a wave that wont hit for years.

Better not. I'm not down with that. I'm very materialistic about my games and related merchandice.
When I say years, I mean years and years. Merchants will never sell a system that downloads games because they dont make any money off systems. Hard Drives would need to be really, really huge, because some people will download every game for a system, and in the future the size of games (MB wise) is only going to be going up.
Tech costs have to drop so much that consumers could afford a system that had enough space for every game downloadable on it, and be a very powerful system to boot (Processor, RAM, GPU, etc). The only possible solution is that all saves you have are on your hard drive, and only the games that you are currently playing are on your hard drive, and if you want to play a game thats no longer on your hard drive you have to download it again.
Not only that, but not enough people are actually have a broadband connection so they can play console games online right now. Combined the PS2 and Xbox have only a few million people who play games online, and many, many millions more who dont.
I think that for many years we will be buying our games in stores, or perhaps a combination of instores and downloading. Maybe in two or three generations of systems we will see this combination, and many more generations down the line we will see downloadable only games being more and more accepted.

[DenisDFat]

They pay way too much for office space. They could get more space at 1/3 the price just be relcating a couple miles east north or south.

West is water.

[WildWop]

Thisll be the N-Gage of home systems. Nobody will buy this because the technology is too new

NGage didn't fail because the technology is too new. It failed because 1) the original design sucked, and still sucks, really and 2) the games suck it hard. Really hard. Like Jenna Jameson hard.

Nobody will buy the Phantom because it's coming into a console market already saturated with quality systems. I don't have room for a fourth current-gen system, thanks, and my normal PC will do just fine.

[KingDox]

well maybe they shouldn't have had such a fancy booth at E3. The only had like 2 phantoms running and like 4 lounge areas. They should have done what everyone else did and cram as many tvs and game stations they could so people could actually play the damn thing.