Phantom console spotted in Snow City

AT NVIDIA'S BOOTH we had a chance to see our friend Kyle's favourite Phantom console. It's one of the consoles that is supposed to arrive sometime in the middle of 2005 but with a different concept from existing Xbox and Playstation consoles.

Actually the company calls this device a broadband receiver with integrated on demand game delivery service. It is digital receiver but you can play games on it.

It should cost between $199 and $299 and it's equipped with not latest greatest Geforce FX 5700 core. It should be enough for some games. This console is very close to PC and it will use PC games. We haven't asked about the CPU, yet, but we know it has 80GB of storage.

This company wants to offer subscription service and to let users pick five to ten games for download and to play it for a month for a price of approximately $20. Final details about how mane games and the price of service are yet to be finalised. It will offer a life time subscription as well but we don't know the price. Or how long we will live.

The company will offer you a list of games every month and you will be able to choose lets say five of your favourite games and play it for a month. You can play your game next month if you like until you finish and replace it with a new game. Its interesting concept and it sure is cheaper than going out and buy every single console game for $50 a peace. Then again you won't be able to chose all you want.

We were impressed with keyboard and mouse of the console as it's designed to fit to your lap when you sit down and relax to play a game. This is definitely good move and it's made for both left-hand and right-hand people. The console itself looks nice and stylish.

It looks interesting but it would be interesting to see how market will react on such a concept.

We saw the console in action and it was running the games fine just like a PC and it has easy navigation as well.

We are also pleased that this firm has called off its lawyers and given HardOCP and Kyle Bennett a break. It took Charlie Demerjian's advice, but took a long time to get to that decision. It's expected to be launched in June 2005. Here is how it looks like. µ