Slightly Mad Studios teases “Mad Box” console

Slightly Mad Studios, the developer behind Need for Speed: Shift and the Project Cars series, has announced that they plan to develop a new games console, one which would be “the most powerful console ever built”. 

This new console was first announced by Ian Bell on Twitter, with Slightly Mad Studios quickly retweeting his post, confirming the console’s legitimacy. In a recent discussion with Variety, Ian Bell also confirmed that the console will ship in “around three years time” and that “it will be a console as is the Xbox and PlayStation”. 

Slightly Mad Studios also plans to support most major VR headsets, with the console being equivalent to a “very fast PC two years from now”, which means that the console should pack a lot of performance. Slightly Mad aim to deliver a console that surpasses both the Sony’s PS5 console and Microsoft’s next-generation Xbox. Ian Bell called the Mad Box “beyond next gen”. 

At this time Ian Bell and Slightly Mad Studios have not discussed any of the console’s hardware plans, aside from its support for VR headsets. The console will be released worldwide alongside a free multi-platform game engine, which will allow developers to create games for the Mad Box and other platforms concurrently, without any charges. Ian Bell stated that he doesn’t plan to “pay developers ‘incentives’ to exclude other hardware vendors”, saying that “exclusives are ‘exclusionary’ “. 

Ian Bell confirmed that Slightly Mad Studios already has multiple investors that are offering the required funding to see the company’s console dreams to their fruition, revealing that their new console will be “competitive with upcoming console prices.” Slightly Mad doesn’t plan to take as large of a cut from console sales as other manufacturers, which will allow the console to ship with an attractive price point.