Project Cars never did make it onto a Nintendo console in the end, but some of you may be familiar with the game's creator, Slightly Mad Studios. As well as making a well-received sequel, the UK firm has built up quite a fanbase around its racing property and is now eyeing a rather more taxing challenge – a move into the world of video game hardware.
Dubbed 'The Mad Box', Slightly Mad Studios' proposed foray into the realm of hardware will, according to CEO Ian Bell, be "the most powerful console ever built" and will support both 4K visuals and VR at 120fps. Bell initially tweeted this news before explaining a little more to Variety.
The console will use Slightly Mad's own cross-platform development engine, called the Madness Engine, and won't have any exclusive games. Instead, Bell says that the price of the machine will be 'competitive' with 'upcoming' consoles, which he presumably hopes will make it appealing to publishers and developers. Bell also says that "old and new" software will be present on the machine, which makes it sound rather like a Steam Box, if you ask us.
When quizzed on why Slightly Mad would ever decide to enter the costly waters of hardware production, Bell replied:
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.
"Multiple investors" are apparently on board already, which means Slightly Mad could actually have the cash required to pull this off. But would such an idea succeed, especially in a market where a firm like Microsoft – one of the tech industry's biggest players with loads of first-party studios under its belt and very deep pockets – finds itself struggling to remain in the running?
Could Slightly Mad's console – which, as Bell admits, won't have any exclusive games – really shake things up? Let us know with a comment below.
[source variety.com]
Comments 65
I'm sorry but I think they're slightly mad to even attempt this. Plus Nintendo fans won't soon forget the way they treated us with Project Cars....
Just try to crack the big 3 now plus add in PC and you have your work cut out for you.
Still can't beat SouljaBoy
This... is insane. There's no way they'll break even.
I'm saving my money for Dreamcast 2
Good for them. Not sure why it's on a Nintendo site though.
Go ahead and read his tweet, it gives you the impression of being overconfident and promising way too much. Not even Valve with their Steam box line promised that much and failed to be competitive against the ''Big 3'' and PC. Not even the Ouya could be competitive even if they wanted to satisfy another angle of this market.
I want to wish them good luck but his first words are very cocky and that for me is actually a turn off.
Yeah not believing this
At most it’ll be a branded Steam Box with their games preloaded but even those ended up being rather niche.
I hate to be negative, but... if it actually comes out it will be dead within a year.
It will failed if all there is on the console is racing/driving games. I don't think those slightly mad people know how to make any other games. Also no exclusives, hopefully they don't get too mad if that Mad Box doesn't sell. At the very least they don't e-beg... I mean crowdfund for money this time around.
No exclusives? What the faust is the point then, lmao. Doomed to fail right off the bat.
I except the company to shutter or be forced to downsize within five years. Could easily be earlier
Lmao. Why on earth would you announce it this far ahead? Why on earth would you try to compete with the big three?
And frankly if you don’t believe in exclusives why on earth would anyone buy it over the systems with established libraries, brands and a bunch of exclusives? If they want top of the line specs they will just build a PC. If they want Exclusives they will buy Switch or PS4/PS5
You won’t have as much freedom on pricing as the big companies do. It will be harder to get good deals with major manufacturers as it’s hard to safely assure enough volume and long term sales and a loss leader strategy will likely be impossible.
This thing is gonna flop. Ouya gonna have a new buddy in the “dead on arrival” club(which happens to host its meetings in a graveyard due to Ouya resisiding there)
Vita has an honorary membership and Virtual Boy Started the club though it has some old geezers everyone forgot about complaining they did it before it was cool.
If they're willing and financially equipped, who are we to object? That said... competition is healthy when it's provided, and what will Mad Box compete with? Living room boxes bent on teraflops seem to be an almost oversaturated market at the glorious number of TWO consoles; in the realm of portability the only upper hand one can offer is topping Switch's hardware with something almost Witcher 3 friendly, and devices like GPD Win 2 already illustrate the flipside of this endeavour in late 2010s.
Oh well, time will tell what kind of madness this box is supposed to boast. Best of luck and all.
Someone indulged in one too many drinks over the Holiday season, I see!
...once he's sobered up, he'll see that this is a terrible idea!
@Spoony_Tech "they're slightly mad" - I see what you did there XD
Lmao. falls off chair Lmao!
Wow....I thought Slightly Mad was the name of the company, not just a description of it's leadership. Apparently "we're all a little mad here" applies in the board room over there.
So here we have an industry where Valve, the biggest name in digital distribution tried for years before catastrophically failing to enter the hardware market. The titanic heavyweights of the software industry in EA, Activision, Ubisoft, with the cash, value, and incentive to enter hardware have never once even attempted to jump into the shark infested waters. One of the former major players flamed out spectacularly in Sega, even with the direct backing and support of current secondary player Microsoft, and current secondary player Microsoft nearly flamed out spectacularly a few years back.
And now we have a company who has made nothing other than 7 racing games, recently PC oriented simulators, and earlier, the worst Need for Speed game ever deciding out of nowhere to jump into the hardware arena and try to directly take on Microsoft, one of the ten richest companies on Earth, and Sony, the walking artifice of the MPAA/RIAA which currently holds even MS on a leash in the gaming industry........ and secondarily Nintendo, though admittedly much more indirectly considering Nintendo competes more as a software company than as a platform company.
And top it all off with the fact that this is coming from a guy/company that has been already caught BS'ing their way through projects they haven't even started with, citing Project Cars on WiiU as progressing well, numerous times, before finally admitting they never actually even started.
Dead on Arrival.
You can't force your way into the Console market on Powerful Specs alone. Slightly Mad would need to develop twelve games to launch with and pull major third party support. Never gonna happen.
Good. Hopefully they spend a lot of money and other resources on this.
Good for them if they succeed, but the market is fragmented enough with 3 brands of consoles, PCs, VR headset with exclusives.
I can already picture a console almost as expensive as a Gaming PC with very little support and customers left with a very powerful console with fewer games than the Virtual Boy.
Hm...
Remind me of this.
Hi.
My name is ShaRaun.
And i am America's Next Top Model....
(First eliminated on ANTM cycle 11) 😆
Analogy:
Hi.
My name is Mad Box.
And i am Next Top Video Game Machines...
(First eliminated on Video games Competition) 😂
In 30 years time the Angry Video Game Nerd (AVGN) will do doing a video on how much of a failure this console was
Hahahahaha! 😂
I'm expecting everyone in this thread to roast and lynch Mad Box out of hatred for them after Project CARS on Wii U was cancelled
At least on the surface, I just don't see how they can make this work.
Without exclusives (cause they probably don't have the bandwidth/network to do that as well), I think this console will be DOA. Why would anyone buy your machine, when say, Sony announces a Spider-Man sequel?
It sounds expensive too. And it's hard to claim that it will be the most powerful console ever built when you don't even know what your primary competition is doing, i.e. Sony and Microsoft.
@aznable there's a good chance you'll be rich before that.
Developing anything to run at 120 FPS is a waste of resources and massive overkill at at its finest. The human eye can’t detect a noticeable difference between that and something running at 60 frames.
Even if everything else goes well, no parent is going to pick 'the Mad Box' over the competition for their ten year old.
I'm gusseing the slightly mad are gonna be the slightly sad soon.
So can it actually run project cars?
4K @ 120Hz
What’s that sound?
Oh, it’s the guys at Digital Foundry laughing their heads off!
I would never buy it..We never forget how you treated us back on Wii U..I say take your upcoming console and shove it
These guys are liars, I hope they fail miserably with this.
@Marios-love-child more like his gran kids will LOL
the PS5 with it's rumoured PSVR2 will kill this quickly, they won't stand a chance ROFL.
doesn't anyone remember the recent AtariVCS? with it's ridiculous price? i wonder how well that is working for them...
@Edu23XWiiU not only are they liars but very greedy too, project cars 2 ultra edition took the mick.
@Spoony_Tech they are "slightly mad" for even attempting this, their name is fitting indeed.
I just don't get why all these smaller companies think they can jump immediately into the turbulent waters of hardware vending. You look at all the failed consoles in the mid-90's, the phantom, all the failed android boxes from a few years like the ouya, gamestick, mad catz mojo, etc, and the most recent hiccups with something like Atari Box/VCS & Coleco Chameleon. Even mighty Valve and the billions they have in the bank completely dropped the ball with their haphazard Steambox lines which repeated the same mistake the 3DO had done back in the 90's.
Now is that to say some 4th pillar could rise up and be successful next to the big 3 in the console space? It's not impossible, but you just look at the way the industry is trending with digital distribution and streaming in the next 10 years, I scratch my head at anyone who wants to make major forays into the hardware market nowadays. I think companies like Nvidia have the right idea with things like the Shield. Not huge market penetrators, but a niche product that can have an audience and a side project to their main business of producing graphics cards.
Anybody can make a console. But are they gonna have 3rd party support? Or 1st and 2nd party exclusives that people want? Not sure project racing is the "buy a console just for that" type of game.
@thesilverbrick The 60fps thing is a misnomer based on an old misinterpretation based on display frequencies available. The human eye doesn't work in "fps" but a continuous stream of available data, so effectively, "infinite" fps, but average response times in terms of the brain interpreting difference has been measured around a bit under 1ms....or roughly 1000fps. It can look fluid on a display at 60fps, but the eye/brain can parse well more than 10x that much data which is what you see when you look around you in real life. Thus in VR, it actually does matter, and 90fps is basically the bare minimum for avoiding VR motion sickness...which is basically the brain rejecting the motion it's seeing as unnatural. 120 is absolutely a fair target for VR.
The box is still an utter joke that's either the doom of a dilusional madman or an attempt to build brand on the internet. But at least the refresh rate is meaningful.
Slightly Mad, indeed.
Guys I'm pretty sure they are boasting 60fps VR, not 120fps. 60fps per eye = 120 if you're in marketing.
In other words, worse than the existing PC VR units. These go up to 90fps which is said to be the minimum comfortable frame rate for VR...
Will buy this for collection purposes. Don't expect it to succeed but regardless good luck to them and I hope they surprise us all.
Wont be in my collection
What an idiot. I wouldn’t buy a thing from these liars
@NEStalgia Well, assuming they'll actually have the balls and the cash and/or partners to pull it off, I guess the only important question left is: "but will it run Crysis?"
Given that their CV consists of two bang average crowdfunded games that launched with significant issues...I don't think I'll be buying any hardware from them.
The guys don't had resources to port a indie racing game to Wii-U, but have resources enough to enter in the console market? Hahahaha! How much it sound crazy? Is a level of stupity beyond imagination. What developer will spend resources working in a engine wich already delivered proof have few compatibility? This project will fail, obviously. Is e even hard believe it is serious
Project cars is still a bugfest
@ThanosReXXX Errr.....no.
What will this machine run apart from bug-ridden racing sims?
@ThanosReXXX
Um...
Btw, what do you think about the first launch of Original Xbox compared with that Mad Box ?
@Anti-Matter What, the original Xbox from the same period as the GameCube and the PS2? I never owned one, but it was a pretty solid launch, with a good variety of games, and the system itself did pretty well. Or at least good enough to make them stay around to this day, so all in all, it most certainly wasn't a bad first effort for them.
This new system doesn't stand a chance, however. Unless it's just going to become a high-end, custom Steam box, literally no one will be waiting for this to come to the market, so it'll more than likely be dead on arrival, just like all the others that have tried, because they thought there was room enough for more than three parties in the console market.
But there just isn't.
Contrary to what they stated, they should secure two or three very very good and interesting EXCLUSIVE games on lauch, possibly bundling one or two with their systems. Like Nintendo did with Super Mario World and the SNES. THAT alone would make the console much more appealing.
@ThanosReXXX you are talking just about console sales, right? Because videogame division of microsoft only beggined see profit after launched kinect. was years of acumulated losses with xbox and x360 before it.About the new console, yeah, you are right. This console don't have chance.
@FlashBoomerang No, I'm just talking about it's launch, the games, and how it was able to carve itself a niche in the games market, REGARDLESS of being sold at a loss. They're here to stay, plain and simple.
@Anti-Matter I see what you did there.
@ThanosReXXX forget Crysis..... Project cars 2 would be miraculous
Soulja Boy showed them the way.
No exclusive games...dead on arrival.
@NEStalgia Haha, yeah. Would be pretty hilarious if they couldn't even get their own game to run flawlessly on their own hardware...
On a side note: if it truly is some kind of Steam box/PC in a box, then theoretically, it shouldn't be a problem, depending on how powerful they want to make the hardware. It should be more powerful than the One X to get the most out of the game, since it runs pretty well on high end gaming rigs, but that would also mean a premium price.
For now, we'll classify it as vaporware...
Coleco Chameleon crap all over again!! 😒
@ThanosReXXX The problem with Steambox is it's an absolute failure, in large part due to SteamOS just being Linux and the fact that the majority of PC games don't run on Linux...... That was always the problem with it. They needed to force 100% of Steam games to be Linux compatible, but instead they created a fragmented ecosystem of "real" Steam on Windows and "mini Steam" on SteamOS/Steambox.
If Mad Box (oh my that name is awful) is just a Linux variant it automatically runs little unless they get the major publishers to stop using DirectX as their baseline....fat chance if even Valve couldn't do it, and Valve owned their main distro channel and was a legendary studio made of mostly former MS staff, not a B-grade racing game studio. And if it's just a Windows box, that means they're paying for Windows on each box and it's more of an Alienware/Razer competitor than PSXBox competitor...and the price points can't be close.
I can't imagine what they're thinking. Why not get into flat panel display manufacturing and air conditioning compressors while they're at it? Heck, just launch a new line of electric cars! What could go wrong? You've made RACING VIDEO GAMES before....now you can do ANYTHING!
I guess we'll see the Japanese sales only annually....I'm not sure if the weeklies can show fractions down to hundredths. XBox will enjoy 2300% greater sales, minimum, guaranteed!
Agreeing with everything said above, but another thing...
Even if they follow through with what they're saying they're doing (I doubt it), they are obviously trying to join the teraflop arms race with Sony and Microsoft. The pitch seems to be that Mad Box will play those games better. But will have enough software to justify the consumer investment?
That's the worst angle for releasing hardware. Two of the main reasons the Switch is succeding is (1) it's power as a PORTABLE system and (2) the great lineup of exclusive software. It's respectable performance as a home console is just gravy when you think about it. This is what's doing well, alongside the mobile gaming industry, whether you love it or hate it.
Even the more questionable systems like the Atari VCS or the new Intellivision supposed to be in development are not expected to be cutting edge, instead aiming for nostalgia.
So while I'm not against competition, this is a crazy idea with a completely wrong direction. I think I'll go back to playing Gear Club on my Switch now.
@NEStalgia They would have to change their company name from "Slightly Mad" to something else, though.
Although I can't really imagine anyone wanting to drive a "Totally Bonkers" Mark 1...
P.S.
Concerning the Steam Box: I had no knowledge of that. I never followed any of it that deeply, so I always thought it was just a PC in a box. No idea it was Linux based, hence me mentioning that in the same breath as PC.
Probably also confused me because I had the Steam online service in mind, which does seem to consist of PC games and gamers, at first sight.
Why not "Leave Luck to Someone Else"
"Totally Bonkers Mark 1" still sounds better than this monstrosity though I'll put it next to the Ouya
Yeah Steam Box was a wonderful idea that went nowhere fast. I think they were going to try to have the "performance" Steamboxes be Windows boxes...but then...you're just selling PCs....and who's going to outsell Dell and HP in consumer PCs? I think the problem is, good as the idea is, PC hardware already became commodity priced, so there's really no way to create value and cut costs there beyond mass production, Dell style, where real consoles are custom hardware that can generate savings over production at scale.
But Slightly Mad.....they can't have the capital to invest in proprietary SoC design, and if they had big industry backing, bigger industry names would be putting their name on the box instead of them (Google, Apple, LG, etc.) So they're either selling full priced PCs, or crummy custom hardware, or some odd Android monstrosity, or Ian Bell is just puffing nonsense (again.) He and Randy Pitchford should get together and announce a Playstation killer. It'll arrive this year! Cross our hearts! Pinkie swear for realsies!
Without any exclusive features or games, there's no way they can break into the industry. Why in the world would someone want to buy this when they could buy a Playstation or X-Box featuring exclusive titles instead, especially once Sony and Microsoft come out with their next consoles that'll close the power gap?
That sounds really dumb releasing a console with no exclusive games. Not that it matters though, as I don't think anyone but some huge company is going to give the big 3 a run for their money.
Saw the designs online. Seems cool, I guess. Will wait for more info before judgement. That said, I still think it's gonna flop. Now, who's up for Dreamcast 2?
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