Infinium snags two industry vets

Infinium Labs, the controversial company behind the yet-to-be-released Phantom Gaming Service, has recruited two game industry veterans. Kathy Schoback and Wallace Poulter have been tapped to both build a public relations team and head up a planned San Francisco Bay Area office.

Schoback, who will be coming onboard as vice president of content strategy, previously served as a director of product operations for Eidos and is currently on the board of directors for the International Game Developers Association. Schoback has also worked in various roles at Sega of America and has served as a national sales manager for the Game Developers Conference.

Poulter, who will be the director of publisher relations, has served as games partnership manager at Apple Computer for the last four years and was a senior product manager and senior producer at Atari before that.

Infinium is currently in a growth mode, with more announcements of new hires due later this week. The company now has 40 employees, and this number is expected to double before the Phantom’s scheduled release, which should be just in time for the holidays. "It’s an exciting time. We’re building up a team," said Infinium President Kevin Bachus. Bachus said he believes Schoback and Poulter are eager to make Infinium’s plans for subscription-based gaming-on-demand a reality. "I spent a lot of time personally trying to recruit them," Bachus said. "Their enthusiasm for this (business model) is the thing that struck me most strongly."

Infinium has been off to a rocky start even before releasing its Phantom PC game console. Uncertainty has swirled around the company and its product, including a flurry of lawsuits filed both by and against the company. Adding to the confusion, a list of publishing partners was removed from the company’s Web site just hours after it was unveiled in January, and the phantom.net Web site now just consists of a single page that mentions a return on May 10. Infinium has promised a playable demonstration of the Phantom console at this year’s E3 Expo.