What a twist: aside from planning Project CARS 3, they are also creating their unique console that will support VR!

Ian Bell, the CEO of Slightly Mad Studios, wrote the following on Twitter: „The Mad Box is coming.” He later explained it in further tweets, such as this one: „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? Do you want a full engine for free to develop your games on it? You have it.” Their console would work with VR headsets, and it’d have 120 FPS in VR (sixty frames per second per eye), supporting the HTC Vive, the Oculus Rift, and other, unnamed fighting sticks and wheels.

Bell told Variety that the Mad Box should ship in three years (so around 2022), and it would be a standalone console like an Xbox or a PlayStation, but with the support of VR headsets, and with a „price competitive with upcoming consoles.” They are in early talks with manufacturers, which means there are no specifications yet. They also don’t look for exclusives – the team thinks the gaming industry is in a monopoly or a smaller oligopoly, and they don’t need crowdfunding this time, as they have investors for the project.

Meanwhile, Project CARS 3 is also planned, and it will be similar to Need For Speed: Shift, which was developed by them a decade ago. Bell wrote about this game on the GTPlanet forums: „We’re still at the design on paper stage… This is very early pre-production. I’ll let you know that Project CARS 3 will be more ‘focused’… More ‘fun’… We went to insane lengths with variation in 2, and with that comes infinite balancing issues. We’ve learned a lesson here, and although we have no intention of reducing content, we know what we need to fix, where we made design decisions that were, let’s call it, ‘sub-optimal’… Project CARS 3 will be more of a spiritual successor to [Need For Speed:] Shift, but with all of the sim goodness, everyone appreciates… The key focus though is on fun and not biting off more than we can properly chew and digest. Absolutely not. It will be even more detailed. That’s why I mentioned that we wouldn’t be losing any ‘sim goodness’… Real cars aren’t hard to drive. It’s more ‘Shift’ in terms of us giving you less of a ‘sandbox’ and more of a fun game. Aside from that, we plan to go to town on sim goodness… We’re not ‘taking away the sandbox’… we’re just adding more of a structured fun game to the mix.”

And we should trust their game at least – he revealed that at least eight ex-Evolution Studios developers, including Paul Rustchynsky (MotorStorm: Pacific Rift, MotorStorm: Apocalypse – lead designer; Driveclub, MotorStorm: RC – director), are working for them. So they are up to something possibly amazing… we should keep an eye on them.

Source: Gamesindustry, Wccftech