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Slightly Mad Studios CEO details Mad Box console

CEO Ian Bell details the Mad Box console that's on its way from Slightly Mad Studios.

Brittany Vincent

January 3, 2019 10:00 AM

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Slightly Mad Studios' CEO Ian Bell is reportedly working on creating a standalone console.

For the uninitiated, this is the team behind Need for Speed: Shift and Project CARS 2, based in London and founded by Bell himself in 2009.

Ian Bell took to Twitter on Wednesday to announce "The Mad Box is coming," a new console that will supposedly support VR and will be shipping in "around three years' time," according to Bell's comments to Variety. Bell stated that "it will be a console as is the Xbox or PlayStation."

What is the Mad Box? It's the most powerful console ever built... It's literally 'Mad'... You want 4k, you want VR at 60FPS? You want a full engine for free to develop your games on it? You have it.

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

“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’,” said Bell in an email to Variety. “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.”

But what can we expect out of the Mad Box? Bell covered that as well: “It’s the most powerful console ever built… It’s literally ‘Mad’… You want 4k, you want VR at 60FPS? You want a full engine for free to develop your games on it? You have it.” In his full chat with Variety, he revealed that the console will allow games from all developers, including exclusive titles that will be up to the developers to decide.

The Mad Box will be a worldwide console, and rather than going the crowdfunding route, apparently Slightly Mad Studios has already recruited "multiple investors" that the team is looking into for the "best offers." There aren't many concrete details other than all these interesting tidbits Bell offered to Variety, nor is there a rigid price out there at the moment, but the Mad Box will be "competitive" with other upcoming consoles' prices.

“Prices will drop with ship quantity but we’re not planning on taking as large a cut as other console owners to enable us to cut prices massively,” said Bell. “We fully expect to be matching the best of the rest early in the lifecycle though.”

We should be seeing additional information coming from Bell and Slightly Mad Studios over the next few weeks, as early design builds will be on their way out in four to six weeks.

Brittany Vincent

Senior Editor

Fueled by horror, rainbow-sugar-pixel-rushes, and video games, Brittany is a Senior Editor at Shacknews who thrives on surrealism and ultraviolence. Follow her on Twitter @MolotovCupcake and check out her portfolio for more. Like a fabulous shooter once said, get psyched!