1Up has an article covering their private viewing of the Phantom, down at CES, where the writer apparently played Return to Castle Wolfenstein on the device, which is somewhat at odds with this comment:
According to reps, deals are in the works to obtain games from, "The six big engine developers."
But anyway, here"s a big chunk of text on pricing:
The objective is not to earn profit off the manufacture and sale of the base unit. Imagine spending 300 to 500 dollars for the system (500 being ultra high-end) and then paying a mandatory 10 dollars a month atop more money for game rentals and purchases, of which Infinium no doubt takes a small percentage. Since the company"s front-end and servers handle the load, they deserve some of the coin. It"s an interesting business model that may sound like a console with a gimmicky subscription tacked onto it, but look at the machine from a PC gamer"s perspective: I purchase a very solid, high-end PC that will technically play just about anything for real cheap ($500). I then pay $10 a month or a lifetime service charge (TIVO style). If I want to upgrade a year or two down the road, I can either cheaply select specific components to be added or improved upon (with work done by Infinium or a licensed third party) or just buy a whole new machine for $300 to $500 and have my existing account rollover to that new rig. Even if a $120 a year subscription is ever-present, that"s a hell of a lot of money to be saved on the upgrade. Tell me, how often do you purchase a $300 to $500 video card? Screw that. Just buy a brand new machine every two years for the same cost and deal with the monthly charge. I actually admire the plan quite a bit since high-end PCs for the consumer level market are good for gaming and little else.