A New Game Console Is Coming To Fuck With Xbox, Nintendo, & PlayStation

When you think of gaming consoles, I’d wager the big three players are what immediately come to mind: PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo. Welp, now another player wants in with a brand new console to compete with the rest.

Slightly Mad Studios, the folks behind Project CARS 2, is aiming to release a console called the Mad Box, which sounds like something my dad would call any console ever. It’s the name any dad who ever called the TV an “Idiot Box” would give a gaming console. Anyway, Slightly Mad CEO, Ian Bell, announced the upcoming console in a tweet early this morning, which you can see below.

The Mad Box is coming.

— Ian Bell SMS (@bell_sms) January 2, 2019

Bell also spoke with Variety about the Mad Box, which he says will be released in roughly three years and will support 120 frames-per-second, which is needed to play virtual reality games. “It will support most major VR headsets and those upcoming and the specs will be equivalent to a very fast PC two years from now,” Bell told Variety via email. “We’re in early talks with manufacturers of components so we can’t say much more right now other than we have the designs specced out in detail.”

When questioned about the games available on the Mad Box, Bell says the team plans “to allow games from all developers, old and new,” and that “The ’new’ possibly being many of those that benefit from our completely free development engine”.

“We think exclusives are ‘exclusionary’ but given that we’ll be shipping a cross platform engine to all developers it will be their choice. As of now we have no plans to pay developers ‘incentives’ to exclude other hardware vendors.”

While Slightly Mad is still in talks with manufacturers, the aim seems to be to outdo the current players with superior hardware. If you want more information on the Mad Box, you won’t have to wait too long, because the company is planning to reveal an early build in four to six weeks.

Bell says the unit will be competitively priced and released worldwide. It’ll certainly be interesting to see how it stacks up against the rest, but if I were to take an early stab, I’d say it’ll provide some kind of middle ground between console and PC in terms of processing power. But hey, I guess we’ll find out in a month or so.