A Rare Prototype of the Failed Phantom Console Is Going Up for Auction

Bringing a new equipment to market place is incredibly unmanageable , and specially so in a field of study already dominated by atrocious players like Microsoft , Sony , and Nintendo . There were many rationality why the Phantom never came to be , but arare prototype of the consolethat no one knew existed is now up for auction .

First announced in 2002 by a startup called Infinium Labs ( that would later be renamed Phantom Entertainment ) the Phantom cabinet was forebode to be a revolutionary unexampled platform that shun discs and cartridges in favor of using the cyberspace to deliver titles through what would be the world ’s first on - need video game help using downloads and subscription . Downloading game to a hard drive in a console is commonplace today , but when the Phantom was announced it was a revolutionary idea , and one that was plausibly in the lead of its clock time as small hard private road capacities and limited access to mellow - speed net in the other aughts posed meaning challenge to the Phantom do to realisation .

The amount of hype behind the product , the lack of functional demos and licensed games , and financing challenge also contributed to the Phantom never hold up into production and finish up on unnumbered vaporware tilt year after year . A working prototype was demonstrated at E3 in May of 2004 , with promises the console table would go on sale in November the same yr , but the release day of the month slipped again and again , and in February of 2006 it was announced that the Phantom was detain indefinitely — its fate to this mean solar day .

Image:Heritage Auctions

At Quakecon 2004 , a prototype of the Phantom console wasdestroyed on point by Kyle Bennettwhose internet site , HardOCP , had been sued by Infinium Labs after it ran a story that was critical of the company , which finally lose well over $ 60 million after all was say and done . It was one of just two units known to exist that feature film the Phantom console table ’s original design . The other unit surfaced at a computing machine repair shop in Florida in 2015 , as report byArs Technica .

If you ’re a gatherer of doomed engineering , a working prototype of the Phantom console isnow up for bidding at Heritage Auctions , with ‘ working ’ being a very promiscuous description of what it can do . The console , essentially just a PC in a fancy caseful , powers up and its light-emitting diode faceplate glows blue , but all the computer hardware does is play a short promotional demonstration spool when connected to a covert . We ’ve reached out to Heritage auction sale to hear and confirm if this was the paradigm find in 2015 in Florida , or a third potential iteration , and will update this account when we know more . But you ’ve got less than a mates of calendar week to make a command and bring this victim of the console wars to your collection .

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