Slightly Mad Studios, the makers of honk ’em ups together with Project Cars and Need For Speed: Shift, have introduced plans to launch a games console of their very personal. Less than one week into 2019, we have already got a powerful contender for Gaming Folly Of The Year. Unlike the Ouya, the final massive try to ascertain a brand new participant within the console market, that is to be a giant, fancy, costly console like yer PlayBoxes and Xstations. What does this need to do with PC gaming? Well… I hope this daft plan doesn’t drag down a studio who make fairly deece games and make use of 160-odd folks.
“The Mad Box is coming,” Ian Bell, the CEO of Slightly Mad, tweeted on Wednesday (as retweeted by the studio’s account, so it’s legit).
“What is the Mad Box?” he continued. “It’s the most powerful console ever built… It’s literally ‘Mad’…”
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.”
You have it.
Bell defined slightly extra to Variety, together with clarifying that the VR shall be 120fps. He mentioned that Slightly Mad “plan to allow games from all developers, old and new,” who’ll get to make use of the studio’s personal cross-platform improvement engine. That’ll be the Madness engine. They don’t plan to lock down exclusives, and its value shall be “competitive with upcoming console prices.” So… why?
“We think the industry is a little too much of a monopoly or a micro oligopoly,” Bell instructed Variety. “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.”
He does say they “have multiple investors already offering the required funding for us to see the product to completion,” so at the least this isn’t all popping out of their very own pocket. Because, y’know, it appears doomed.
Most games are cross-platform these days anyway, and the few games that are unique play a big half in console buy selections. Not to say many widely-used engines are cross-platform, in order that perk isn’t big to builders both. With no exclusives and no established model or model loyalty, I can’t think about this doing effectively.
Slightly Mad are additionally engaged on a Project Cars game for pocket telephones, in addition to nonetheless updating Project Cars 2.
