With the recent announcement of the upcoming OnLive streaming PC game service (and the allegations that such a service would not work as advertised) many people compared OnLive to the similar Phantom Entertainment service from Infinium Labs. Gamasutra has posted up a new chat with one of the people involved in that earlier failed service, Kevin Bachus.

The somewhat rambling interview, conducted before the OnLive announcement last month, has Bachus saying that when he took over as CEO of Infinium Labs in 2004 there was already a perception that the Phantom was a sham and would never come to fruition. In fact Bachus states, "The truth is quite the opposite. The product was tantalizingly close to coming to market. But there was so much momentum that was difficult ultimately to overcome. I think that it sort of was a case of self-fulfilling prophecy."

Bachus resigned from the company in 2005 and after that the company's orginal founder Timothy Roberts was accused of stock manpulation by the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Bachus wouldn't comment much about those charges, saying, "Was he doing it in a way because it would help the company and also enrich himself? I don't know. But I think without really knowing the details of the situation, it's kind of inappropriate to jump in and say, 'Well, the guy was a crook.'"