Phantom Console Put on Hold

technoid_ writes "Looks like the Infinium Labs Phantom Game Console is put on hold until they can secure some more funding. Right now the company is focusing on getting its Phantom Lapboard to the market, and may pursue the Phantom Game service later. Interesting note, they have spent almost 4 times as much on Consultants as they have in development costs so far." From the article: "From its inception in December of 2002 through September of last year, Infinium racked up $62.7 million in losses. Of that, only $3.5 million has been lost to development costs. The company has spent more than half that in advertising, even though none of its products or services have been released yet. More of the company's money has been going toward consultants ($12.8 million), salaries ($11.9 million), and general and administrative expenses ($5.9 million)."

Development costs == Salaries??

[panaceaa]

Infinium racked up $62.7 million in losses. Of that, only $3.5 million has been lost to development costs. More of the company's money has been going toward ... salaries ($11.9 million)

What's the difference between development costs and salaries? I could see that the salaries of HR people and accountants should not be counted as development costs, but what about the salaries of the developers? Is the $3.5 million figure just hardware / fabrication costs, or does it also include development salaries?

Sounds about right...

[digitac]

At E3 a few years ago I went by their booth to see mock-ups of the Phantom Console and they were giving away t-shirts that said "I Believe". It always seemed to me to be a mocking acknowledgement of the general consensus that the product would never hit the market. Even at that E3 everyone knew the product was vaporware. It probably still has a release date between Duke Nukem Forever and Team Fortress 2, both of which are tentatively scheduled to be released shortly after the end of the universe (according to a poster I saw at Milliways). "I Believe" indeed. I believe it's the best promotion of vaporware ever. ::Digitac

Re:Theivery is awesome!

[nelsonal]

This is exactly what the HardOCP story exposed, and the $25 million payday for the insiders is why they sued to get them to hush up. Since the VCs invested after that story the expose was published, it is always nice to see fools separated from their money (hopefully they will have less foolishness or less money next time).

Re:I thought the whole "Phantom Console" was a sca

[jandrese]

Nope, that's pretty much correct. I have no idea how they managed to blow that much money though. I guess it's probably hiding off in some offshore account while they report it as "expenses" to the IRS. The demo unit they had at E3 a couple of years ago was a PC inside of a custom built case that probably cost them less than $500 to build.

Re:For serious?

[ShawnDoc]

I worked at a .com startup that was like this. Each of the original founders was taking home more money each month that I was given to run the entire web development team. Again, we were a .com startup so our entire business was web development. So our entire budget (salaries + software + hardware) for the entire development team was less than the paycheck for one of the original founders. And by the way, only one of the "founders" was actually actively involved in the company. I remember one month the "travel expenses" of one of the founders was more than his monthly salary. Any wonder we didn't last much more than a year?