Speaker 1: Hey there, it's Jonathan Strickland, and I'm here to introduce
Speaker 1: a playlist of ten episodes of my podcast tech Stuff
Speaker 1: that are all about entertainment and entertainment related fields, from
Speaker 1: video games to television series, two films to internet videos
Speaker 1: from yesteryear. So I hope you guys enjoy these episodes.
Speaker 1: You can go to the tech Stuff podcast page and
Speaker 1: subscribe to listen to all sorts of episodes about tech
Speaker 1: from all realms, and hopefully this will provide a little
Speaker 1: bit of entertainment, a little bit of education, and probably
Speaker 1: more than a few puns, because that's kind of how
Speaker 1: I roll. Enjoy this playlist. Welcome to text Tuff, a
Speaker 1: production from my Heart Radio. Hey there, and welcome to
Speaker 1: tex Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive
Speaker 1: producer with I Heart Radio, and I love all things tech,
Speaker 1: and we are closing out our entertainment playlist with an
Speaker 1: episode about an infamous piece of hardware, the Phantom game consoles.
Speaker 1: So this episode is called the Phantom Zone. This one,
Speaker 1: uh became legendary in tech circles as people began to
Speaker 1: do some detective work to figure out what exactly was
Speaker 1: going on. And if anything was going on, really fascinating
Speaker 1: stuff I hope you guys enjoy. So what was the phantom, Well,
Speaker 1: it is meant to be a next generation gaming rig
Speaker 1: that would bring PC gaming to the living room back
Speaker 1: in two thousand three two thousand four, and it opposed
Speaker 1: something fairly revolutionary in the process. Now, today, if you
Speaker 1: were to unveil a gaming device that required you to
Speaker 1: download all the titles to a hard drive, you probably
Speaker 1: wouldn't raise that many eyebrows. It's not uncommon for a
Speaker 1: gaming PC to lack an optical drive, after all, most
Speaker 1: gaming rigs I've seen these days don't have an optical drive.
Speaker 1: And digital delivery of games has been growing in popularity.
Speaker 1: I mean, just take a look at steams numbers, They're incredible.
Speaker 1: There's still a market for physical copies of a game, however,
Speaker 1: particularly since you can potentially sell or trade in old
Speaker 1: games if you use physical media. But overall, I'd say
Speaker 1: the trend has been to move toward more of a
Speaker 1: digital download experience. So if I said I was going
Speaker 1: to launch a brand new console that could only stream
Speaker 1: or download games, I probably wouldn't leave very many people
Speaker 1: scratching their heads today. But the same was not true.
Speaker 1: Back in January two thousand three. That's the year a
Speaker 1: new company that was called Infinium Labs announced it was
Speaker 1: bringing a gaming console called the Phantom to market. Now,
Speaker 1: this was months before Steam would launch, let alone become
Speaker 1: the dominant online market for computer games. In two thousand three,
Speaker 1: it was pretty much common practice to go to game
Speaker 1: stores or big box outlets to purchase computer titles. So
Speaker 1: when Infinium Labs brazenly announced the company intended to turn
Speaker 1: the home gaming market on its head, they got a
Speaker 1: lot of attention. Now, ultimately the story would be followed
Speaker 1: by controversy, anger, and finally mockery, and it includes allegations
Speaker 1: of fraud or at the very least ineptitude. It involves
Speaker 1: the company that changed its name and switched tracks to
Speaker 1: create a totally different product than the one that was
Speaker 1: promising to consumers. So we're really going to dive into
Speaker 1: the story of the Phantom and what actually happened. Now,
Speaker 1: our story begins. You guys know me, I like to
Speaker 1: always dive further back than when the actual stuff happens.
Speaker 1: Our story really begins almost a decade before any mention
Speaker 1: of the Phantom ever hits the public in the early
Speaker 1: nineteen nineties in St. Louis, Missouri. They're a man named
Speaker 1: Timothy Munroe. Roberts was working at a computer store and
Speaker 1: he had a customer named Andrew Gladney, and the two
Speaker 1: of them began to talk about an idea for a business.
Speaker 1: This was not the business that would become in Phenium Labs, however.
Speaker 1: It was instead to create a data hosting service and
Speaker 1: an early Internet data hosting company. They called it the
Speaker 1: Savas Communications Corporation s a v v I. S now.
Speaker 1: Gladwell put up the majority of the starting capital. He
Speaker 1: had a pretty healthy trust fund to draw from. It
Speaker 1: was left to him by his grandfather, who has a
Speaker 1: founder of a company that made a little soft drink
Speaker 1: called seven Up. Together they got the business up and running,
Speaker 1: and the company saw some early success, with Robert's landing
Speaker 1: a big deal with Apple Computer Incorporated. And landing Apple
Speaker 1: meant Savas had some areous market buzz behind it, and
Speaker 1: they soon secured several other big contracts. Roberts, however, had
Speaker 1: decided that he wanted to try and do something else,
Speaker 1: so he left Savaths in ninete and went out to
Speaker 1: start a new business. Now this time, this was a
Speaker 1: web hosting company called in Tira I n t I
Speaker 1: r A, also based out of St. Louis, Missouri. Some
Speaker 1: of the concepts the company pushed were predictive of the
Speaker 1: cloud computing craze that would follow a few years later,
Speaker 1: but perhaps it was a touch too early for the company,
Speaker 1: and coupled with the dot com bubble bursting in the
Speaker 1: early two thousand's, it ended up not surviving. It filed
Speaker 1: for bankruptcy protection in two thousand one. Oddly enough, Roberts
Speaker 1: had already extricated himself from the company at that point,
Speaker 1: selling off most of his stock, which in hindsight might
Speaker 1: seem like it was a bit of a tip off.
Speaker 1: Roberts had left in Tira around so a couple of
Speaker 1: years before the company went under, and he went on
Speaker 1: to found another company, this time called Broadband Infrastructure Group Corporation,
Speaker 1: also known as Big b a G. The company's mission
Speaker 1: was to act as a sort of incubator for tech
Speaker 1: companies and develop communications businesses. According to the St. Louis
Speaker 1: Business Journals, this is still happening in St. Louis, Missouri now.
Speaker 1: According to the St. Louis Post Dispatch, Big raised about
Speaker 1: eighteen million dollars from investors in two thousand and it
Speaker 1: even sponsored a race car during the Indianapolis five hundred
Speaker 1: that year. There are also stories of lavish parties, expensive wines.
Speaker 1: In fact, part of the bankruptcy proceedings because spoiler alert
Speaker 1: Big went out of business to part of the bankruptcy
Speaker 1: proceedings include the auction of twenty four models of Chateau
Speaker 1: Lafitte Rothschild, which was a worth about twenty four thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: Within nine months of raising those millions of dollars, b
Speaker 1: I G closed. Now that led to Robert's getting some
Speaker 1: heat in St. Louis See I changed it to St.
Speaker 1: Louis for this part, and soon he had folks at
Speaker 1: the state and federal and city levels all asking some
Speaker 1: really tough questions about his entrepreneurial efforts, and undaunted, he
Speaker 1: picked up stakes and he moved to Florida near Tampa.
Speaker 1: He started a new company called Infinium Labs, and on
Speaker 1: January two thousand three, he started the company two thousand two,
Speaker 1: by the way, but in two thousand three, on January twenty,
Speaker 1: company issued a press release about their plans. It's a
Speaker 1: short one, so I'm going to actually read the press release.
Speaker 1: A Tampa Bay area technology company, in Phinium Labs Corporation,
Speaker 1: will develop and market a new game console that will
Speaker 1: outperform the Xbox Sony, PlayStation two, and GameCube. The company
Speaker 1: plans to market a high performance gaming console and delivery
Speaker 1: system to provide consumers with options and capabilities that are
Speaker 1: not available in today's marketplace. The console will appeal to
Speaker 1: the hardcore gamer and the high end consumer electronic purchaser.
Speaker 1: Then next generation game console provides a robust, fault tolerant
Speaker 1: delivery system that supports games on demand, game rentals, game demos,
Speaker 1: seamless upgrades, and patch management. The game console is an
Speaker 1: always on broadband device. It is easy enough for children
Speaker 1: to use independently, yet so advanced it exceeds the needs
Speaker 1: of hardcore gamers. Infinium Labs was formed by veteran entrepreneurs
Speaker 1: who have a successful track record in building large scale
Speaker 1: companies and advanced architectures for supporting massive e commerce and
Speaker 1: enterprise applications. Combining skills from tell COO, data communications, digital
Speaker 1: rights management, software development, and security, the management team brings
Speaker 1: together a unique array of skills to develop the most
Speaker 1: robust next generation gaming console and delivery network on the market.
Speaker 1: The Infinium Labs game console features a high tech design
Speaker 1: and offers ease of use for the variety of game
Speaker 1: players worldwide. The on demand delivery system will appeal to
Speaker 1: hardcore gamers as well as casual users. The unique design
Speaker 1: architecture allows for delivery of a large number of games
Speaker 1: and the ability to participate in online massive multiplayer gaming.
Speaker 1: Key features include fastest console on the market, broadest selection
Speaker 1: of preloaded games, cross platform capabilities, stay of the art
Speaker 1: design and architecture, advanced accessories and wireless capabilities, online connectivity
Speaker 1: for multiplayer gaming, seamless upgrades and patch management. A multi
Speaker 1: tiered subscription service that meets the needs of casual, moderate
Speaker 1: and hardcore game players, demo games before purchasing or subscribing
Speaker 1: games on demand, and game rentals. The advanced system provides
Speaker 1: game developers and publishers a secure and efficient software distribution system,
Speaker 1: and Phendium Labs intends for game developers and publishers to
Speaker 1: reap greater profits using this new game delivery system. And
Speaker 1: Phideum Labs has engineered its prototypes and expects to unveil
Speaker 1: the new gaming console in March of two thousand three.
Speaker 1: The company intends to launch the game console to the
Speaker 1: US consumer market by No. Member two thousand three. Remember
Speaker 1: that date. And Phenium Labs has chosen Florida as its
Speaker 1: corporate headquarters. Florida has emerged as a leader in support
Speaker 1: of technology companies with its e Florida initiative. Offices will
Speaker 1: soon will open soon in Silicon Valley and St. Louis, Missouri.
Speaker 1: About in Phenium Labs and Phenium Labs Corporation was formed
Speaker 1: in October two thousand two as a global entertainment gaming company.
Speaker 1: And Phinium Labs mission is to market a gaming console
Speaker 1: and delivery system that will be the performance leader in
Speaker 1: the game playing entertainment industry. The company will market a
Speaker 1: robust game console that will appeal to a wide audience
Speaker 1: with its ease of use, quality assurance, and robust delivery systems. Now,
Speaker 1: we could probably say today that those promises we're a
Speaker 1: little astounding for their time and perhaps even a bit boastful.
Speaker 1: I mean, you're talking about the fastest game console on
Speaker 1: the market. Back in two thousand three, this was a
Speaker 1: new company, untested in this space, setting out to challenge
Speaker 1: entrenched companies like Sony and Hindo. And then you had Microsoft,
Speaker 1: which was relatively new to the video game console market
Speaker 1: at this point but had already established itself as a
Speaker 1: powerful presence in the industry, and the features the press
Speaker 1: release listed were extremely innovative at the time. I'm sure
Speaker 1: the gamers out there recognized that many of those features
Speaker 1: are now standard on several consoles. For example, both on
Speaker 1: the Xbox One and on the PS four, you can
Speaker 1: sample some games and even get some titles as part
Speaker 1: of a monthly subscription service. So that kind of stuff
Speaker 1: today isn't innovative, but at the time it was a
Speaker 1: totally different way of doing business. So the promises being made,
Speaker 1: while advanced, we're all features that would later on become
Speaker 1: standard and video game consoles. It's just that in two
Speaker 1: thousand three, this was a really wild idea, and it
Speaker 1: raised questions was the world ready for an always on
Speaker 1: internet connected console? Now? Judging by the resistance gamers put
Speaker 1: up when Microsoft first said the Xbox One was going
Speaker 1: to follow that same model and being always on broadcast service,
Speaker 1: I think it's safe to say that, if I can
Speaker 1: two thousand three, the world was not ready at that point.
Speaker 1: Because it wasn't ready when the Xbox One came out.
Speaker 1: More importantly, was the technology ready or did the company
Speaker 1: make promises that would have been impossible to deliver upon
Speaker 1: even if it had been established as a play big
Speaker 1: player in the space up at that point. In other words,
Speaker 1: if this had been Sony or Microsoft, would they have
Speaker 1: been able to pull it off? Or was this just
Speaker 1: a promise that no one at the time could deliver upon.
Speaker 1: We'll take a look at more details about the unveiling
Speaker 1: of the Phantom and what happened in the wake of that,
Speaker 1: but first let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor. Now,
Speaker 1: before I get into all the controversy that surrounds the Phantom,
Speaker 1: I thought it would be a good idea to talk
Speaker 1: about what it was supposed to have inside of it,
Speaker 1: what kind of connectors it was supposed to have, you know,
Speaker 1: how it was going to connect to your television, and
Speaker 1: talk a little bit more about the subscription service and
Speaker 1: the online element to this, to kind of get an
Speaker 1: idea of what exactly was supposed to come out. Now,
Speaker 1: keep in mind that not all of this ever materialized. Also,
Speaker 1: this is dependent upon technology of the early two thousand's
Speaker 1: even the TV technology at the time. So there's some
Speaker 1: things that you would have considered would have needed to
Speaker 1: be standard that we're not included, like h d m
Speaker 1: I is not a component on the Phantom spec list,
Speaker 1: and that's largely because back in two thousand three not
Speaker 1: such a big thing. But other things that you don't
Speaker 1: see as much anymore, like composite or component video that
Speaker 1: definitely was part of it. So for the standard components
Speaker 1: of the Phantom, because you could also get optional components
Speaker 1: added on, or at least in three you could. In
Speaker 1: reality you couldn't get anything. The standard components were supposed
Speaker 1: to include a custom operating system on a Windows XPE kernel,
Speaker 1: so that custom operating system was to make it proprietary,
Speaker 1: kind of like the operating systems you would encounter on
Speaker 1: other video game consoles, and it would end up locking
Speaker 1: you into the Phantom's ecosystem. It was supposed to have
Speaker 1: an a m d Athalon xpred plus central processing unit,
Speaker 1: which would have approximately one point eight giga hurts of
Speaker 1: CPU power, and it was supposed to have an Nvidia
Speaker 1: g Force f X fifty undred Ultra graphics processing unit.
Speaker 1: Was also supposed to have an Nvidia enforce to Ultra
Speaker 1: four hundred motherboard, two hund fifty six megabytes main memory,
Speaker 1: forty gigabyte hard drive, Dolby Digital five point one surround
Speaker 1: sound onboard, radio frequency wireless modules that would allow you
Speaker 1: to connect things like UM wireless mouse or wireless controllers
Speaker 1: or wireless keyboards to this and S video r c
Speaker 1: A or component video connections also composite as it would
Speaker 1: turn out a Ethernet port so that you could actually
Speaker 1: plug that into your Internet connection that was supposed to
Speaker 1: always be connected to the Internet, so you need to
Speaker 1: have something a wireless controller, a wireless keyboard and mouse
Speaker 1: to USB ports and for controller ports. Then there were
Speaker 1: some optional components you could add on to that which
Speaker 1: would include extra controllers either wireless or accorded ones, a
Speaker 1: keyboard and mouse with charging, base station storage expansion for
Speaker 1: additional game storage, so you could double the amount of
Speaker 1: storage space on there in theory, a DSL modem, a
Speaker 1: cable modem, a wireless WiFi card, memory upgrades, speaker sets,
Speaker 1: and flat screen displays. So in other words, you could
Speaker 1: go from something that you were supposed to just hook
Speaker 1: up to your TV to something that would have potentially
Speaker 1: multiple screens, although as far as I can tell, they
Speaker 1: the graphics card wasn't necessarily set up to support multiple displays,
Speaker 1: but that doesn't mean that it couldn't happen. One thing
Speaker 1: the Phantom did not have was any sort of portable
Speaker 1: storage drive. So there were no CD drives, no DVD drives,
Speaker 1: no cartridges, no floppy disks, nothing like that was ever
Speaker 1: supposed to go into the Phantom. All material was meant
Speaker 1: to be downloaded or streamed directly to the console. Now
Speaker 1: you may hear some of those specs and say, well,
Speaker 1: that just sounds like it's a PC, and really, when
Speaker 1: you get down to it, that's what the Phantom was.
Speaker 1: But then, to be fair, all video game consoles ultimately
Speaker 1: end up becoming variations on the concept of a personal computer.
Speaker 1: The big difference is you've got some changes in architecture.
Speaker 1: Something like the PlayStation four has an architecture that's different
Speaker 1: than most PCs. Uh And with a console, you typically
Speaker 1: are stuck with the hardware that the system came with
Speaker 1: when it first launched or whenever you bought it. So
Speaker 1: if I go out and buy an Xbox one today,
Speaker 1: it's hard for me to upgrade that I can probably
Speaker 1: upgrade the storage by adding external storage, but I'm not
Speaker 1: going to be able to upgrade the processor or graphics
Speaker 1: cards or anything like that. With a PC, you can
Speaker 1: actually upgrade components, at least until you bump up against
Speaker 1: limitations like you've got stuff that's going to be too
Speaker 1: big for the size of case that you have, or
Speaker 1: the motherboard will no longer support it, something along those lines,
Speaker 1: And technically you could keep on swapping out components are
Speaker 1: essentially building a new computer at that point rather than
Speaker 1: just upgrading. But it is a possibility, but consoles are different.
Speaker 1: You pretty much have to wait for the next generation
Speaker 1: to buy up and and increase your console's capabilities. The
Speaker 1: Phantom was meant to play PC games, so that was
Speaker 1: one concern a lot of people had early on, was
Speaker 1: that if this in fact was to be a standalone
Speaker 1: video gaming console for the living room, that would allow
Speaker 1: you to play PC games in the living room, something
Speaker 1: that a lot of people have been trying to do
Speaker 1: and in fact today are still trying to do, like
Speaker 1: steam boxes are essentially that same kind of a pre coach. Uh.
Speaker 1: Even though you know that was the mission statement, everyone
Speaker 1: was pointing out, well, what happens when the games get
Speaker 1: too advanced to run on the hardware of the Phantom
Speaker 1: You would have to upgrade somehow, and you could do
Speaker 1: some upgrades through firmware, but that's not going to make
Speaker 1: the processor work any faster necessarily, or make the graphics
Speaker 1: card work harder. So that was a big concern, was
Speaker 1: that if, in fact, this is essentially a customized personal
Speaker 1: computer running some proprietary software on top of it, then
Speaker 1: what happens when the games get too advanced. Now, as
Speaker 1: it turns out, there was never a need to answer
Speaker 1: that question, but it was one of the early ones.
Speaker 1: And as I mentioned earlier in this episode, the console
Speaker 1: never hit the market, so some people would refer to
Speaker 1: it as vaporware. But all the components existed. The stuff
Speaker 1: that they talked about really did exist. I mean, all
Speaker 1: of those different elements you could go out there and buy,
Speaker 1: so there was never a problem with that. There's just
Speaker 1: there was no consumer product that featured all of those
Speaker 1: in that configuration as a Phantom console. There are a
Speaker 1: couple of prototypes or show models that Infinium Labs would
Speaker 1: trot out at various events like C E S or
Speaker 1: E three, and there's some debate in online circles as
Speaker 1: to whether those prototypes represented a real effort to create
Speaker 1: a phantom console or if they were in fact just
Speaker 1: a run of the mill PC inside a customized case.
Speaker 1: In some cases, it wasn't even that. According to one
Speaker 1: story I was reading, a games journalist went to E
Speaker 1: three and saw a demonstration of the phantom console, and
Speaker 1: it sat down next to u representative from Infinium Labs
Speaker 1: who was going to give a demo of the whole thing,
Speaker 1: and they had the console sitting in front of them,
Speaker 1: and they tried to launch a game and it didn't
Speaker 1: work out properly, And as it turned out, the representative
Speaker 1: actually revealed to the games journalists that the game itself
Speaker 1: was being run on a PC behind the cabinet, That
Speaker 1: the console that was on display was in fact a
Speaker 1: dummy console. It didn't do anything. It just had some
Speaker 1: lit up letters that spelled out phantom, but there was
Speaker 1: nothing going on inside of it. Now that's not to
Speaker 1: say that every single instance was a fake console with
Speaker 1: a real PC behind the curtain, Wizard of Oz style,
Speaker 1: but at least according to that one report, that was
Speaker 1: the case. Now, as it turns out, years after the
Speaker 1: Phantom controversy had kind of fizzled out. Ours Technica would
Speaker 1: run a piece about a reader named Eddie Schlessinger who
Speaker 1: worked at a computer repair shop in Venice, Florida. Now remember,
Speaker 1: Infinium Labs was originally located off Florida, and around two
Speaker 1: thousand twelve a customer brought in this weird PC console.
Speaker 1: It was branded a Phantom, So apparently this customer had
Speaker 1: bought the set from someone else who had no idea
Speaker 1: what the heck this thing was for the princely sum
Speaker 1: of two hundred dollars. Now, considering that it may be
Speaker 1: one of a kind, or at least maybe one of
Speaker 1: a dozen or so, that's not bad. Lessenger had a
Speaker 1: chance to crack it open and look under the hood
Speaker 1: and see what was there. Now, Remember Schlessenger was telling
Speaker 1: Ours Technica about this a few years later, I think
Speaker 1: it was so about three years had passed so, according
Speaker 1: to Schlessenger, inside the prototype was a motherboard supposedly made
Speaker 1: by a sus That's what Schlessenger thought, had the Nvidia
Speaker 1: f x a g P video card that had been announced.
Speaker 1: It had some d DR ram um, some of the
Speaker 1: ports on the back were working and others were just
Speaker 1: for show. It had video outputs for composite component and
Speaker 1: S video connectors, which again these days we had probably
Speaker 1: just use hd M I instead. It also had audio
Speaker 1: output jacks for optical co acts or r c A connectors,
Speaker 1: and there were four USB ports. The system was not
Speaker 1: in working order, so he ended up making some modifications
Speaker 1: to it, and he even installed a Phantom promo video.
Speaker 1: He took a video that had been circulated on the
Speaker 1: internet for a while and he used that as sort
Speaker 1: of the load up screen for the console, so that
Speaker 1: the customer could say that he owned a working Phantom console. Now,
Speaker 1: it sounds like a lot of the stuff in Finnian
Speaker 1: was claiming the Phantom would include found its way into
Speaker 1: that prototype, which is something. At least not all those
Speaker 1: sports were working. But then if the company wanted to
Speaker 1: create a proof of concept to kind of show how
Speaker 1: the system would work, it might only focus on the
Speaker 1: necessary components to get to perform as needed for a demo.
Speaker 1: So in other words, if you're shopping it around trying
Speaker 1: to get some investors to give you money, you might
Speaker 1: have a mock up where it's not a fully functional unit,
Speaker 1: but you want to show off the concept so that
Speaker 1: you can get the funding to complete it. That doesn't
Speaker 1: necessarily mean that the company is shady or suspicious in
Speaker 1: any way. Presumably the finished product would have included all
Speaker 1: of the working components that were being talked about in
Speaker 1: their press releases. Now, that would also mean customers would
Speaker 1: get a keyboard and mouse in what Athenium Labs was
Speaker 1: calling a lap pad. And this was an attempt to
Speaker 1: make it easier to play PC style games on a
Speaker 1: home television in your living room. Many PC games are
Speaker 1: compatible with game controllers, but some games, like first person
Speaker 1: shooters or real time strategy games tend to work best
Speaker 1: using a mouse and keyboard approach. If you use a
Speaker 1: controller and you go up against someone else who's using
Speaker 1: mouse and keyboard, you will probably find your petuity handed
Speaker 1: to you. So what about the online service part of
Speaker 1: this whole package? Will Atheneum Labs plan to operate a
Speaker 1: Virtual Private Games Network or vpg N And this is
Speaker 1: a special type of virtual private network or VPN. And
Speaker 1: you may have used VPNs for work or for your
Speaker 1: own computers. For those of you who are unfamiliar with
Speaker 1: the idea, let me give you a real quick, high
Speaker 1: level rundown. So a VPN create it's a private network
Speaker 1: across a public network. So take the Internet for example,
Speaker 1: that's a public network. Anyone can hop on or off
Speaker 1: at any time. Private networks require access to machines on
Speaker 1: the network itself, so like a physical private network is
Speaker 1: completely separate from any other network, or it only has
Speaker 1: very controlled portals to other networks, and the only way
Speaker 1: you can get on that physical network is if you
Speaker 1: have access to a machine that's connected to it. Um
Speaker 1: a VPN simulates that it's not a true private network,
Speaker 1: but through code, creates a situation that is essentially like that,
Speaker 1: and it can send that communication across a larger public network.
Speaker 1: This means communication across the VPN is encrypted to protect
Speaker 1: data from snoopers. Otherwise you might as well just use
Speaker 1: a public network in the first place. It's typically used
Speaker 1: by businesses to allow remote employees access to company intranet systems.
Speaker 1: Other folks might use a VPN to communicate securely with
Speaker 1: other people or to access services that might otherwise be
Speaker 1: blocked in their real physical location. So you might log
Speaker 1: into a VPN and use that in order to access
Speaker 1: something that otherwise you would not be able to touch
Speaker 1: from wherever you are. It's really handy if you happen
Speaker 1: to be in a country that has a, you know,
Speaker 1: a more nanny state kind of approach to guiding how
Speaker 1: the Internet should be used by the population. So why
Speaker 1: would Athenium Labs want to operate a VPG n Well,
Speaker 1: mostly it's to lock a customer into an ecosystem. And
Speaker 1: here's how the business plan would have worked if it
Speaker 1: had ever launched. You decide you're gonna go out and
Speaker 1: buy a Phantom console. Actually, you can have a couple
Speaker 1: of different options. You could purchase one for ad dollars
Speaker 1: at least that was one of the amounts quoted, which
Speaker 1: is actually incredibly cheap. Or you could rent it. Or
Speaker 1: you could sign up for a two year subscription agreement
Speaker 1: with Infinium Labs on their Virtual Private Games Network, and
Speaker 1: if you subscribe for two years, you would get the
Speaker 1: hardware for free. So the subscription would cost twenty nine
Speaker 1: dollars a month, and for that you would be able
Speaker 1: to use the Phantom network to download games, uh to
Speaker 1: stream games, to play games online with other people. You
Speaker 1: would have access to a suite of games right away
Speaker 1: that would be included with your subscription fee, so you
Speaker 1: wouldn't have to pay any extra for a certain library
Speaker 1: of games. If you wanted games that were beyond that library,
Speaker 1: and Infinium Labs had secured the rights, you would be
Speaker 1: able to download demo versions of those for free, and
Speaker 1: if you wanted to purchase it, you could do so
Speaker 1: through infinium labs as online store and download the game
Speaker 1: directly to the console. The console would keep track of
Speaker 1: how much storage space was left, and it could even
Speaker 1: dynamically manage it. So if you started getting close to
Speaker 1: your limit, Remember you've got that forty gigabyte limit. Let's
Speaker 1: say you start getting close to that. These days, it
Speaker 1: wouldn't take long at all because games are so huge.
Speaker 1: But let's talk about two thousand three, two thousand four.
Speaker 1: You start getting close to that forty gigabyte limit, well,
Speaker 1: the Phantom would end up deleting older games that you
Speaker 1: had not played in a long time, but the service
Speaker 1: would keep track of which games you had purchased, so
Speaker 1: if you ever decided you wanted to go back and
Speaker 1: play an old title, then you could download it again
Speaker 1: for free because you had already purchased it previously, so
Speaker 1: there'd be a record of the fact that you had
Speaker 1: bought it before and you wouldn't have to buy it
Speaker 1: a second time. Now, in many ways, this is how
Speaker 1: subscription services like Xbox Gold memberships work today. The business
Speaker 1: plan sounded actually pretty solid. It was very innovative for
Speaker 1: its time. There'd be incentive for gamers to subscribe month
Speaker 1: after month because they could get access to the games
Speaker 1: within the library, as well as a chance to buy
Speaker 1: other brand new games, possibly at a discount because you're
Speaker 1: not buying them the physical media, although now we know
Speaker 1: that doesn't always work out that way. You don't always
Speaker 1: get a discount just because you're not buying, you know,
Speaker 1: a disk. It can be just as expensive or sometimes
Speaker 1: more expensive to buy the digital version, which is infuriating
Speaker 1: for a lot of people. There were also hints that
Speaker 1: game titles could come out a little earlier, so you
Speaker 1: could get them much quicker than you would if you
Speaker 1: were to have to go to the store. There was
Speaker 1: no danger of them selling out. You didn't have to
Speaker 1: worry about pre registering for a game and hoping that
Speaker 1: the the local game stop or whatever game store you
Speaker 1: would go to would have enough copies on launch day.
Speaker 1: You could just download it, so there were definitely, you know,
Speaker 1: reasons that a gamer might be interested in this. Although
Speaker 1: the thought of having to pay an ongoing subscription service
Speaker 1: to keep using a video game console that you had
Speaker 1: already purchased rubbed a lot of people the wrong way.
Speaker 1: It was an idea that maybe wasn't quite ready yet.
Speaker 1: So on the business side it sounded fantastic because you
Speaker 1: would have a company that would have an incoming stead
Speaker 1: flow of revenue because it's not just selling a console
Speaker 1: once to a customer. It's selling a console and then
Speaker 1: offering a subscription service and then getting a monthly subscription
Speaker 1: fee from that customer, and then you put that across
Speaker 1: thousands of customers. That's an incredible revenue stream and it's
Speaker 1: obviously one that works for a lot of game developers
Speaker 1: today and game consoles today. But at the time, again
Speaker 1: it was a pretty uh radical idea. Now, on top
Speaker 1: of that, using a proprietary approach for games distributions solved
Speaker 1: another problem the company would otherwise encounter. So this is
Speaker 1: another reason for that virtual Private Games network. The Phantom was,
Speaker 1: as I said, essentially a PC connected to a television,
Speaker 1: so without any sort of proprietary overlay, nothing would necessarily
Speaker 1: stop gamers from downloading games from other sources outside of
Speaker 1: Infinium Labs. If you could just log into the Internet
Speaker 1: and maybe go into a Torrent site, if you had
Speaker 1: a bit Torrent installed on your Phantom, you could end
Speaker 1: up pirate in games if you wanted to. But by
Speaker 1: having that proprietary layer on top that was encoding games
Speaker 1: in a way that only in Phinium Labs machines would run,
Speaker 1: then you didn't have to worry so much. You know,
Speaker 1: people couldn't just take their their Phantom and make it
Speaker 1: do anything. They were limited in what they could do
Speaker 1: with it. So it's a kind of a special purpose PC, uh,
Speaker 1: or at least you could reduce the number of people
Speaker 1: who are using it to pirate games. I mean, someone
Speaker 1: is always going to find a way to hack hardware
Speaker 1: and make it do something it wasn't intended to do,
Speaker 1: especially if it started off as a PC. That makes
Speaker 1: it easier if you know what you're doing. Now. All
Speaker 1: of this was met with some skepticism, though again I
Speaker 1: have to stress that we've seen these sort of things
Speaker 1: pan out in the long run with stuff like Steam
Speaker 1: and various video game console markets. But at the time
Speaker 1: it seems so ambitious and so sudden and out of
Speaker 1: the blue that a lot of people were worried that
Speaker 1: this was too good to be true. And you know
Speaker 1: how the rest of that saying goes well. Athenium Labs
Speaker 1: had made some big promises, including a desire to get
Speaker 1: a product on the market in time for the two
Speaker 1: thousand three holiday season. That time came and went, and
Speaker 1: the company had no consoles to show for it, but
Speaker 1: they said, don't worry, it's going to come out in
Speaker 1: holiday season two thousand four. That time came and went
Speaker 1: as well, and still no console. They did show it
Speaker 1: off a couple of times at different at different trade events.
Speaker 1: Like I said, but at least in some cases it
Speaker 1: turned out that it wasn't really a console that people
Speaker 1: were seeing, just the concept of what the console would be.
Speaker 1: Even before Infinium Labs had slipped that two thousand four
Speaker 1: holiday dates, some people were really suspicious of what was
Speaker 1: going on behind the scenes, which included some folks who
Speaker 1: wrote for hard O c P. That's an online magazine
Speaker 1: that caters to PC owners. You can find tons of
Speaker 1: articles and reviews about all sorts of things over there,
Speaker 1: including a pretty tough investigation into Infinium Labs and Timothy
Speaker 1: Roberts in particular. All Right, So it's September two thousand three,
Speaker 1: a Wednesday, as it turns out, and an article goes
Speaker 1: up on hard O c P News titled behind the
Speaker 1: Infinium Phantom Console, and it takes a really hard look
Speaker 1: at Timothy Roberts's past as well as the claims made
Speaker 1: by Infinium Labs. The article argued that Roberts had a
Speaker 1: history of starting companies that ultimately failed, while raising millions
Speaker 1: of dollars in investment money in the process. So the
Speaker 1: article alleged that Infinium Labs as of September two thousand three,
Speaker 1: had raised at least twenty five million dollars in venture
Speaker 1: capital and had nothing to show for it. Now, I
Speaker 1: might be inferring too much here, but even in the
Speaker 1: opening of this article, to me, it sounds like they're
Speaker 1: at least hinting that perhaps these business ventures weren't meant
Speaker 1: in sincerity. In other words, there might not have ever
Speaker 1: been an intent to actually have a working business there. Again,
Speaker 1: this is my interpretation. The article does not say this outright. Instead,
Speaker 1: it just seems like there's a hint that maybe there's
Speaker 1: some sort of scam shady business stuff going on, and
Speaker 1: it sounds a lot like the main plot behind the Producers,
Speaker 1: Like if you raise a lot of money for a
Speaker 1: business and that business ultimately fails, you never have any profits.
Speaker 1: You have to worry about paying out to shareholders. If
Speaker 1: the business didn't profit, then you have nothing to pay
Speaker 1: So what what? Who cares if you just have to
Speaker 1: have bought a few cases of incredibly expensive wine in
Speaker 1: the process. But this may be putting words into hard
Speaker 1: o CPS figurative mouth. At least in that first section,
Speaker 1: there are no outright accusations that Roberts was running any
Speaker 1: sort of scam. But the article continues with a breakdown
Speaker 1: of what the phantom console is supposed to have, essentially
Speaker 1: running that same press release I read earlier, but pointed
Speaker 1: out that at least to that point, the only images
Speaker 1: that had been seen outside the company were three D
Speaker 1: renderings and not actual photographs of a working device. Later
Speaker 1: we would get photos and videos of a device that
Speaker 1: appeared to be working, but at this time there were
Speaker 1: there were no such images available. Next, the article laid
Speaker 1: out the places that Roberts had worked over the previous
Speaker 1: eight years. He had held eight different CEO or director
Speaker 1: level positions in those eight years. According to his own website,
Speaker 1: they included two other companies when Force LLC and med
Speaker 1: Higher LLC that we're operating operating concurrently within Phinium Labs. So,
Speaker 1: according to his website, he was a director on one
Speaker 1: Force LLC and med Hire LLC while simultaneously serving as
Speaker 1: the CEO of Infinium Now. The writers at hard O
Speaker 1: c P took time to contact med Hire LLLC to
Speaker 1: check in on Roberts's history. The article states that a
Speaker 1: woman who was identified as Laura Roberts picked up the
Speaker 1: phone and indicated that Laura Roberts different person, uh, and
Speaker 1: Timothy Roberts's mother was in fact the director of med
Speaker 1: Higher lll C, and that Timothy, while being her son,
Speaker 1: was not a director. Later this same Laura Roberts said, oh, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: Timothy Roberts is a co director, but I don't have
Speaker 1: any contact information for him. I don't have a phone
Speaker 1: number or an email address or anything. And when they said,
Speaker 1: isn't it strange that you work for a company but
Speaker 1: you don't have any contact information for one of the
Speaker 1: supposed directors of this company, and her response was he
Speaker 1: changes phones a lot, which also seems a little weird.
Speaker 1: They also tried contacting when Juan Force ll C. And
Speaker 1: they found out that Timothy's brother, Peter, was the executive
Speaker 1: vice president of that company. So there's a lot of
Speaker 1: family business going on here. The piece then talks about
Speaker 1: Roberts's time at Big and Interira, which I've already covered here,
Speaker 1: so I'm not going to go back over it. The
Speaker 1: section framed Roberts as someone who had been involved in
Speaker 1: several remarkable failures, including ones that earned a reputation for
Speaker 1: lavish spending before the coffers ran dry. Next, the article
Speaker 1: turned attention towards the headquarters for the company itself. It
Speaker 1: showed that the register information listing had Infinium Labs as
Speaker 1: address noted as fifty three eighty Gulf of Mexico Drive
Speaker 1: and Longboat Key, Florida. The magazine hired a photographer to
Speaker 1: go to the address to get pictures of the location,
Speaker 1: and what they got back where photos of a small
Speaker 1: strip mall that had one open office space that had
Speaker 1: inside of it a single desk with a telephone on it.
Speaker 1: There were other small businesses at that address, but they
Speaker 1: were all identified that none of them were Infinium Labs.
Speaker 1: Six months later, the magazine had tried again, sending another
Speaker 1: photographer out to that same location. Again, there was no
Speaker 1: evidence of an office operated by Infinium Labs there. They
Speaker 1: decided to inquire at a nearby mailboxes, etcetera that was
Speaker 1: part of this area, and they found that the mail
Speaker 1: that was being sent to Infinium Labs was going to
Speaker 1: a p O box at mailboxes, etcetera, and that the
Speaker 1: company did not appear to operate any physical space at
Speaker 1: that particular address. Curiouser and curious er. Well, a story
Speaker 1: gets even more weird, But before I jump into any
Speaker 1: more of it, let's take another quick break to thank
Speaker 1: our sponsor. Back to the story so hard, OCP reaches
Speaker 1: out to Timothy Roberts to get his response, and Robert
Speaker 1: said that things were just getting started over at Infinium Labs,
Speaker 1: and he admitted that there was no physical office yet,
Speaker 1: but that it was on its way and they were
Speaker 1: just trying to, you know, get everything in order. Now
Speaker 1: you could be really generous and say, all right, I
Speaker 1: believe you, but considering that the company was going to
Speaker 1: have to go into production soon to get units out
Speaker 1: by the holiday season. That was kind of tough off
Speaker 1: right hard. O CP was really skeptical because that time
Speaker 1: was coming up quickly, and if they didn't have a
Speaker 1: physical space, how are they going to actually build these
Speaker 1: consoles that supposedly we're going to be on sale in
Speaker 1: time for the holidays. They even followed up by sending
Speaker 1: a volunteer to a different address. Athenium Labs Corporation announced
Speaker 1: it was moving into a new headquarters building at eighteen
Speaker 1: nineteen Main Street, Suite eight hundred in Sarasota, Florida, and
Speaker 1: the volunteer said that when she went to the building,
Speaker 1: she looked at the directory and saw no companies listed
Speaker 1: for the eighth floor at all. There was an eighth floor,
Speaker 1: so at least there's that, but there was no one
Speaker 1: listed for it. So she took an elevator ride on
Speaker 1: up to the eighth floor, and then she said it
Speaker 1: was a ghost town. There was there's no occupation on
Speaker 1: that floor. Now near the end of the article, you
Speaker 1: get to a pretty tough paragraph. I'm going to quote it.
Speaker 1: The facts speak for themselves. Company closures, bankruptcy, investors losing
Speaker 1: millions of dollars, and current director positions where the company
Speaker 1: isn't even sure he works for them and cannot find
Speaker 1: his email address or telephone number. Mr Roberts has been
Speaker 1: involved with one successful business venture in eight years, according
Speaker 1: to his own resume. He followed that one up with
Speaker 1: several bankrupt and failed businesses. It's been documented by other
Speaker 1: sources that millions and millions of dollars were burned through
Speaker 1: in the last six years. We think that it's possible
Speaker 1: that the same fate could very possibly befall in Phenium Labs. Now.
Speaker 1: The response from Infenium Labs was just as harsh. The
Speaker 1: company complained and said that they were going to file
Speaker 1: a lawsuit against hard O CP in Florida, saying that
Speaker 1: they had made these UH these unsubstantiated claims and accusations
Speaker 1: against the company and therefore had hurt the company's UH
Speaker 1: chances of raising money and getting investment, and therefore if
Speaker 1: they failed, it would be because of criticism them like
Speaker 1: the kind from heart O CP. Heart O CP responded
Speaker 1: by filing a lawsuit for a declatory judgment and saying
Speaker 1: that they didn't do anything wrong from a judge. So
Speaker 1: the judge decided that he would hear the case and
Speaker 1: said that in Penium Labs would need to present information
Speaker 1: about the company's business in Texas because they reportedly had
Speaker 1: an office located in Texas. They would also have to
Speaker 1: provide information about their investors board minute meetings from around
Speaker 1: the time that the article was published, in order to
Speaker 1: indicate whether the company was, as they had claimed, much
Speaker 1: further along than the article had indicated, and also other
Speaker 1: information such as Timothy Roberts's own personal income tax records.
Speaker 1: And Phenium Labs failed to acquiesce to those demands, and
Speaker 1: ultimately the company would settle out of court, reportedly paying
Speaker 1: hard O c p Fifty thou dollars in the process.
Speaker 1: Now in two thousands four, despite having nothing to show
Speaker 1: for itself other than this prototype that had been demonstrated,
Speaker 1: a couple of trade show events and Phenium Labs went public.
Speaker 1: They went from a privately held company to a publicly
Speaker 1: traded company. Timothy Roberts owned a whole lot of shares
Speaker 1: of stock, and by two thousand five things were looking
Speaker 1: particularly shady over at Infinium Labs. Remember they had missed
Speaker 1: two ship dates already with the phantom console. Well, Roberts
Speaker 1: decided to step down as CEO. He still had millions
Speaker 1: of dollars worth of stocks at the time, and he
Speaker 1: did something that got the attention of the US government.
Speaker 1: He hired a stock promoter to send out a facts
Speaker 1: blast to potential investors with claims that the company was
Speaker 1: on the verge of releasing the phantom console and then
Speaker 1: the value of the company was set to blast off
Speaker 1: into the stratosphere. So at the time, this was a
Speaker 1: penny stock, meaning super cheap stocks for in phinium labs.
Speaker 1: But with penn stocks, even the increase of just a
Speaker 1: couple of cents can mean a huge profit if you
Speaker 1: own a ton of stocks. So, as it turns out,
Speaker 1: it look like Timothy Roberts was trying to drive up
Speaker 1: the stock price before he sold off his own stock.
Speaker 1: Roberts was ready to unload it once that price goes up,
Speaker 1: and that's called a pump and dump scheme. You do
Speaker 1: something to artificially pump up the value of a stock
Speaker 1: before you sell off your supply. When the dust settles
Speaker 1: and people see that the hype was just hype, the
Speaker 1: price comes back down, but by then you're already moving
Speaker 1: on to your next gig. Right, Well, that's what the
Speaker 1: sec said Timothy Roberts had done that he had effectively
Speaker 1: run a pump and dump scam using Infinium Labs, and
Speaker 1: the SEC IS the Security Exchange Commission, that they were
Speaker 1: not happy and they had some serious concerns now Roberts
Speaker 1: would end up getting off relatively easy all things considered.
Speaker 1: He was ultimately hit with a thirty thousand dollar fine
Speaker 1: after he reached a settlement with the SEC and as
Speaker 1: part of that settlement, he also agreed to not be
Speaker 1: an officer or director of a publicly traded company for
Speaker 1: five years, and he was supposed to stop playing with
Speaker 1: penny stocks too. Back to Infinium Labs, the company changed
Speaker 1: its name to Phantom Entertainment, and by two thousand six
Speaker 1: they had kind of quietly ended all promotion and discussion
Speaker 1: of this console that never ever materialized. Instead, the company
Speaker 1: decided it was going to pivot and release a gaming
Speaker 1: mouse and keyboard, which sounded a lot like the lapboard
Speaker 1: that was originally going to be part of the Phantom
Speaker 1: console hardware. In September two thousand six, they said this
Speaker 1: lapboard was going to start hitting store shelves in November
Speaker 1: two thousand six. In reality, it would take two more
Speaker 1: years before the Lapboard was actually available towards the second
Speaker 1: half of two thousand eight. In two thousand seven, Ours
Speaker 1: Technica wrote another piece about the company, detailing its many problems,
Speaker 1: including how the headquarters had bounced around from Florida to
Speaker 1: Washington State to New York and was supposedly going to
Speaker 1: move back into Florida. The article's author, Nate Anderson, detailed
Speaker 1: the many problems the company had with various creditors and
Speaker 1: its strategy of issuing more stock when it needed cash,
Speaker 1: and it did this a lot with companies like Merrill
Speaker 1: Lynch or the Motley Fool or Center Point Property, and
Speaker 1: on three occasions by issuing stock to members of the
Speaker 1: Bishara family that had leveled three different lawsuits against the company. Now,
Speaker 1: this did not exactly paint the picture of a legitimate corporation.
Speaker 1: According to Anderson, by two thousand seven, the company had
Speaker 1: been operating at a net loss of more than seventy
Speaker 1: three million dollars. Yikes. When the Lapboard finally did come out,
Speaker 1: it ended up getting really lackluster reviews. A quick jump
Speaker 1: over to the Phantom Entertainment website shows that, amazingly enough,
Speaker 1: it still exists. I don't know if the company does,
Speaker 1: but the website still up. It hasn't been updated since
Speaker 1: two thousand eleven, but it is still there. As for
Speaker 1: Timothy Roberts, why has that scamp been up to since
Speaker 1: his departure from Athenium Labs. Well, in two thousand seven,
Speaker 1: he founded a company called Games Streamer, or at least
Speaker 1: that's when the company's press release says it was founded
Speaker 1: was two thousand seven. The actual existence of the company
Speaker 1: wasn't revealed until two thousand nine, so whether it had
Speaker 1: existed for two years secretly or not, who's to say.
Speaker 1: Now Roberts had listed himself as the CEO and CTO
Speaker 1: and president and CEO B on the company profile. This
Speaker 1: was a privately held company, however, so there was no
Speaker 1: conflict with this agreement that he had made with the
Speaker 1: SEC a few years earlier, because that only applied to
Speaker 1: publicly traded companies. It was also based in Tampa, and
Speaker 1: it was supposed to be a leading innovator in digital
Speaker 1: distribution and streaming solution for games. Now, Roberts wouldn't stay
Speaker 1: there for very long. In two thousand ten, and he
Speaker 1: and a guy named Terence F. Taylor, the CFO of
Speaker 1: game Streamer resigned to start a new company together. This
Speaker 1: was originally going to be a company called Platforms with
Speaker 1: a Z at the end, and it was a digital
Speaker 1: distribution company. But we can't leave game Streamer that quickly,
Speaker 1: you see. The company would end up suing both Roberts
Speaker 1: and Taylor. They claimed that both of them had tried
Speaker 1: to secure trade secrets belonging to game Streamers for themselves. Essentially,
Speaker 1: the allegation was that Timothy Roberts had registered domain names
Speaker 1: and trademarks under his own name rather than under the
Speaker 1: game Streamers company name, and that he then planned on
Speaker 1: using those same ideas in a business that would compete
Speaker 1: directly with game Streamers. The company also accused Roberts of
Speaker 1: threatening them, saying that he was going to reveal confidential
Speaker 1: company information that would ultimately harm the business. Now, Taylor
Speaker 1: and Roberts countersued Game Streamers. They alleged, among other things,
Speaker 1: that they were both being fired for game Streams because
Speaker 1: they refused to convert to Seventh day adventist. I am
Speaker 1: not making any of that up. Ultimately, those lawsuits would
Speaker 1: all settle out of court in two thousand eleven. But
Speaker 1: our story ain't over. Yet, folks, Roberts and Taylor would
Speaker 1: launch another business in two thousand eleven, and it was
Speaker 1: called Sevtira. It was billed as a cloud computing company
Speaker 1: and its name was a combination of Savas. Remember that
Speaker 1: was the first company Roberts had worked with, and in Tira,
Speaker 1: which was that big failed company had worked with, Which
Speaker 1: makes me wonder if Roberts was running out of ideas
Speaker 1: at this point to combine two names of previous businesses
Speaker 1: into a third one. At its height, Savtira had a
Speaker 1: valuation of five hundred million dollars. But here's the problem,
Speaker 1: it was actually worthless. In fact, Sevtira had to declare
Speaker 1: bankruptcy in two thousand twelve and it went into Chapter eleven,
Speaker 1: but then was forced into Chapter seven, which means it
Speaker 1: was liquidated. A judge ordered all assets liquidated to pay
Speaker 1: off creditors. Robertson Taylor had been selling stock certificates for
Speaker 1: a company that simply could not conduct business as was claimed.
Speaker 1: And this wasn't just bad news to wealthy investors who
Speaker 1: were out of a big wad of cash. Savtira's employees
Speaker 1: suffered as well. There were real people who had been
Speaker 1: working for a company under the belief that it was
Speaker 1: a legitimate business, but their paychecks stopped as the company
Speaker 1: ran out of cash, and toward the end, the company's
Speaker 1: bank account was at negative five thousand dollars before they
Speaker 1: were able to secure at two fifty thousand dollar alone. Allegedly,
Speaker 1: a good amount of that loan would end up going
Speaker 1: to some personal expenses that roberts had accumulated, rather than
Speaker 1: to actually pay off creditors of the company. According to prosecutors,
Speaker 1: because yes, of course this is going to end in
Speaker 1: another court case. It was all based on false revenue projections.
Speaker 1: That's what the value, the perceived value of this company
Speaker 1: was hinging upon. Robertson Taylor would be arrested on charges
Speaker 1: that they committed wire fraud. Roberts pled guilty or pleaded guilty,
Speaker 1: and his sentencing was scheduled to happen in two thousand seventeen,
Speaker 1: though as of the recording of this podcast, that still
Speaker 1: hasn't happened. It may happen sometime in mid March last
Speaker 1: I heard uh. He faces up to twenty years in prison.
Speaker 1: His buddy, Terrence Taylor, also pleaded guilty to wire fraud charges,
Speaker 1: and he was recently sentenced to five years in prison
Speaker 1: back in December two thousand seventeen. Now there's a lot
Speaker 1: more I could say about Roberts. For example, he also
Speaker 1: led a company called hashing Space, which is a bitcoin
Speaker 1: minor hosting service. Terrence Taylor was CFO over there too,
Speaker 1: but after the Feds served a six count indictment against
Speaker 1: the two guys, they both stepped down from that company.
Speaker 1: Hashing Space continued on buying out Roberts's ownership of the company. Anyway,
Speaker 1: that's the story of Timothy Roberts and the Phantom Console,
Speaker 1: and I want a cookie. I do not know to
Speaker 1: this whether another Phantom Console was ever sincerely going to
Speaker 1: be built, or if in fact it was just a
Speaker 1: shell so that Timothy Roberts could raise a lot of
Speaker 1: money from investors and then spend it however he liked.
Speaker 1: I don't know the answer to that. There are a
Speaker 1: lot of indications that show that there were at least
Speaker 1: some cursory attempts to create some hardware. And I'm sure
Speaker 1: people who are working for the Phantom are for Infinium
Speaker 1: Labs and then later Phantom Entertainment believed in their heart
Speaker 1: of hearts that they were working on a product that
Speaker 1: was going to go to market, but whether it was
Speaker 1: a sincere attempt or just a hoax from the beginning,
Speaker 1: the fact remains it never went anywhere and it became
Speaker 1: kind of the laughing stock. It was one of those
Speaker 1: things that was held up as not just something that
Speaker 1: to ridicule, but something to show as an example of
Speaker 1: what can happen with vapor wear. So an incredible story
Speaker 1: and uh, maybe we'll follow up on this later on
Speaker 1: and talk more out some of the fallout and also
Speaker 1: some of the things that have happened in the wake
Speaker 1: of the Phantom console that brought some of those ideas
Speaker 1: to life. Like I said, while those ideas were way
Speaker 1: ahead of their time, they are ones that have found
Speaker 1: their ways into various game platforms today, whether it's PC
Speaker 1: based stuff like Steam or it's video game consoles. We've
Speaker 1: seen those concepts worked into video gaming. So there were
Speaker 1: some really good ideas there. If they had been executed properly,
Speaker 1: maybe the landscape of gaming would be very different today.
Speaker 1: Maybe in Phinium Labs would be the valve of today
Speaker 1: where they'd be the dominant player in PC gaming distribution,
Speaker 1: But as it stands, not so much. And that's it.
Speaker 1: I hope you guys enjoyed the Phantom Zone and got
Speaker 1: to learn some stuff about a game console that we're
Speaker 1: still not sure exactly how far along it odd, if
Speaker 1: at all. And really it's an idea that was ahead
Speaker 1: of its time. The question is would it have been
Speaker 1: achievable back then with the technologies that were available or
Speaker 1: was it just something that was too ambitious And if
Speaker 1: they had waited maybe ten years, it would have been fine.
Speaker 1: Who's to say. If you guys have any suggestions for
Speaker 1: future episodes of tech Stuff, reach out to me on
Speaker 1: Facebook or Twitter. We use the handle text stuff hsw
Speaker 1: Let us know if you like this playlist. If you did,
Speaker 1: maybe I'll make up some more of them and we
Speaker 1: can have a few more weeks where we send out
Speaker 1: a playlist of different episodes that have a theme to them.
Speaker 1: Or if you have any specific themes you would like,
Speaker 1: like the history of big companies or a video game
Speaker 1: centric playlist, or whatever it may be, let me know
Speaker 1: and we'll see what we can do and I'll talk
Speaker 1: to you again really soon. Text Stuff is an I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the i Heart Radio app Apple podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.