It might not be too long before there’s a fourth home console in the mix. Over the last few days, Slightly Mad Studios has been sharing details of a home console that they’re working on that will be called the Mad Box.
All of the information has been coming by the way of Slightly Mad Studios CEO Ian Bell (not to be confused with the England cricketer) over on Twitter, who first mentioned the console back on January 2nd, also saying that it would be “the most powerful console ever built”.
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) 2 January 2019
In the days since then, Bell has posted numerous concept photos for the console and has been asking for fan feedback, and some of them are a bit, well, mad:
I can’t help but think that second one looks a bit like a loot box. Earlier today, Bell posted another concept photo, and this one looks the most like a traditional home console, although it seems to come equipped with some pretty cool neon lights that make it look reminiscent of a high-end gaming PC:
Design concept (number 4 I believe?)… Would love to hear your feedback. pic.twitter.com/svwUS1CQig
— Ian Bell SMS (@bell_sms) 7 January 2019
It’s obviously very early days for the Mad Box, and it’s a very ambitious project (trying to break in to such an established console market is going to be a massive task), but Slightly Mad Studios are clearly intent on listening to potential customers about their console. He also made it clear that Slightly Mad Studios will be providing a free engine for developers to make games for the Mad Box, and that developers will be free to release their games on other consoles too.
There are currently no concrete details on pricing or release date, but Bell thinks the console is still about three years away at this point, which means it will likely be competing against the next generation of PlayStation and Xbox consoles, by which point it may well not be the most powerful console ever released. If, by then, it turns out to be more powerful than both the next generation of PlayStation and Xbox then it’s also likely to be the most expensive. We’ll have to wait and see.
By the way, if you fancy yourself as a bit of a marketing extraordinaire then Bell is offering out 10K and free games for life to whoever can come up with the best slogan for the console.
I want to be clear about this. The best slogan for the ‘Mad Box’ gets 10K and free games for life. This isn’t a joke. Hit me.
— Ian Bell SMS (@bell_sms) 6 January 2019
These are very interesting developments, we’ll now have to eagerly await any more details about the console. For now, I’m off to try and think up some slogans…
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