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Infinium to bring game rental downloads to Europe

New broom, but same old story?

This time round, the Phantom is still based on the PC, and probably with components from the same names - Nvidia and AMD, primarily - as last time, though Bacchus did not confirm this. However, he said the 'new' device is based on the early incarnations of the next-generation of his suppliers' technologies rather than the last of the previous generation. His proposed system is sufficiently standards-based to be cheap, yet custom enough to operate efficiently and securely - there's an anti-piracy Trusted Platform Module in there, for example.

But first, Bacchus has to put his company's corporate house in order, he said. There's a sense that the shift from Sarasota, Florida to Seattle, albeit initially made for programmatic reasons - it's where Bacchus himself is based, and there are more engineers in the area than in Florida - will help position Infinium as a more 'serious' company than it has appeared to be to date. Bacchus' comments suggest he wants to put a more formal corporate structure in place, something potential funding sources will hopefully feel they can do business with.

That's not to say the entrepreneurial spirit is out, merely that its maverick side, as embodied by Roberts, has been tamed somewhat.

Funding, of course, remains crucial. There's a market, a unique proposition with which to tap it, plenty of content to exploit and a business model geared to make it easy for retailers to offer the product. But those factors count for nothing if there's no money to maintain the momentum.

Bacchus needs it to resolve past disputes with suppliers and creditors, and to put in place the manufacturing and content licensing deals that will be necessary to get the Phantom hardware out of the door and onto retailers' shelves in the US and ultimately in Europe too. And that takes cash. Where's it going to come from? Bacchus couldn't say, but we look forward to the company's public statements when it's able to make them. And if it can't, there'll be plenty of folk queuing up to say 'told you so'. ®

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