Slightly Mad Studios revealed the first concept art of the Mad Box, a gaming console meant to take on the biggest names in the industry. From the concept designs to the developer approach, the Mad Box was the talk of the gaming community. Unfortunately, after the reveal of the Google Stadia, it’s not the talk of the investor community – at least not as much.
Online marketing director Nathan Bell recently sat down with the team over at PCGamesInsider.biz to talk about the impact that the Stadia had on their upcoming console. “Google’s announcement of Stadia hasn’t helped the project with our investors,” he told the site. “We had some solid investment lined up but Google saying ‘the future of gaming isn’t in a box’ hasn’t done us any favours. Two investors pulled out after the announcement of Stadia. All I can say at this stage is the future of the project is questionable.”
It’s a shame to hear that the future is looking grim, especially with how impressive the console aimed to be. When it was first announced, the studio revealed that it would support a variety of headsets. The CEO also mentioned that the specs will be equivalent to a “very fast PC 2 years from now,” in an earlier interview. “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.”
After the interest was ramped up, he later clarified that it will be 120fps while offering games from all types of developers, both big and small – old and new. The main goal is to be a standalone platform and because of that, a lot of the power lies in the developer’s hands. “We think exclusives are ‘exclusionary’ but given that we’ll be shipping a cross-platform engine to all developers it will be their choice,” Bell wrote. “As of now we have no plans to pay developers ‘incentives’ to exclude other hardware vendors.”
The interest in the new console was high with both developers and gamers alike, unfortunately, the Stadia announcement game out of nowhere and dealt a hefty blow. It looked amazing, but is the interest high enough to compete with the likes of Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo – and now Google?