After a series of disappointing showings at past shows including GDC, Infinium Labs will debut its Phantom Gaming Service at E3 held later this week. The company plans to offer the console free of charge to consumers who sign a two-year contract for a basic subscription to its online gaming service at $29.95 per month. Those who opt to buy the hardware will pay $199, which will be credited back to their account over two years if they remain a subscriber.
The Phantom Gaming Service is powered by an AMD Athlon XP 2500+ CPU, a Nvidia GeForce FX 5700 Ultra GPU and the Nvidia nForce 2 Ultra 400 platform processor, with 256MB of main system memory and a 40 gig hard drive. The console comes bundled with a mouse, keyboard, and gamepad."Everybody loves games, both the casual player and the avid gamer," said Kevin Bachus, president, Infinium Labs. "People my age who grew up playing video games are now starting families of their own and are eager to play together. We"ll have an array of titles, something for everybody. And all the consumer will have to do is sit down in front of the system, choose a title and begin to play. The service is that easy to use. We anticipate that every generation will be fighting over the controllers."