The company behind ‘Project CARS’ is making a video game console

Ladies and gentlemen, we know it’s only January, but we might just already have the most bizarre news story of 2019. Slightly Mad Studios, the development team behind the hardcore racing simulator Project CARS, is building a brand new video game system.

CEO and founder of Slightly Mad Studios group, Ian Bell, took to Twitter to announce the news. “What is the Mad Box?” he asked. “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.”

https://twitter.com/bell_sms/status/1080468977019584512

Speaking to Variety after the announcement, Bell continued to trickle out details. “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’.”

“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.”

Exclusives for the system, meanwhile, will be up to each individual developer but the company claims it has no plans to pay for them.

While the console is apparently set to ship in around three years and will be a console “as is the Xbox or PlayStation”, it’s worth noting that the studio doesn’t have any actual hardware experience. That said, prices will reportedly be competitive with the rest of the market.

The London-based studio was founded by Bell in 2009, and is best known for working on both Need for Speed: Shift and the Project CARS series. Only a couple of early images have been revealed, with the internals blurred for the time being.

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