Prepare for the Mad Box
Mad Box? What am I talking about, you may be asking. A fair question, and the answer is this: the Mad Box is a new video game console expected to hit the market in “around three years time,” according to Slightly Mad Studios CEO Ian Bell.
What is the Mad Box? Well, Mr. Bell actually has a bit more to say about the Mad Box, specifically that it’ll be the most powerful console ever. Corresponding tweet follows (all the best news lives on Twitter). In an email to Variety, Bell explained that the Mad Box “will support most major VR headsets and those upcoming and the specs will be equivalent to a ‘very fast PC 2 years from now’,”
In that same email/interview with Variety, Bell explained about the Mad Box
“It will support most major VR headsets and those upcoming and the specs will be equivalent to a ‘very fast PC 2 years from now’. 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.”
Bell originally teased the Mad Box wednesday with a tweet simply stating “The Mad Box is coming.” When Variety pressed for a bit more information, Mr. Bell was happy to oblige.
For a little more perspective, the folks at Slightly Mad Studios are the team behind the highly acclaimed Project CARS series, Shift 2: Unleashed, and more notable driving games. Slightly Mad are also known for their driving and racing simulators, as well as their Madness Engine, which has been used for creating incredibly accurate “simulation adaptations.” The official website notes numerous adaptations, such as “automotive to mining, autonomous vehicle AI to tailor-made VR showrooms, from off-the-shelf solutions to full bespoke simulation.”
There’s plenty more information in the aforementioned Variety interview, including Slightly Mad Studios’ thoughts on exclusives and where the console will be made available (SPOILER: aiming for worldwide), but one statement definitely caught my interest:
“We think the industry is a little too much of a monopoly or a micro oligopoly. We think competition is healthy and we have the required hardware contacts to be able to bring something epic to fruition based on our designs.”
I would absolutely agree with that! The video game industry has been dominated by three companies making all the hardware: Sony’s PlayStation, Microsoft’s Xbox, and Nintendo hardware. It will take some time, around three years or so, but when the Mad Box is ready to join the console market, I’ll be there to see how things shake out.
