94 PCWorld FEBRUARY 2019FEATURE THE MADBOX CONSOLE & THE FUTURE OF GAMING
and unobtrusive hardware. The idea was
backed by some of the biggest names in PC
hardware, and stemmed from Valve, at the
time one of the most popular companies in
the games industry.
Nobody bought Steam Machines.
And why would they? Steam Machines
ran Linux, and while Valve convinced a lot of
companies to turn out Linux ports it didn’t
turn SteamOS into a more viable gaming
platform than Windows. For a while people
thought Valve might make a game that sold
Steam Machines—maybe make Half-Life 3 a
SteamOS exclusive? That would’ve been
interesting for sure.
No such luck, though. Steam Machines
continued on with a tiny library until one
day we realized “Wow, we haven’t heard
about Steam Machines in a while.” Then
after a while even those commentsstopped. Steam Machines simply disap-
peared, with only the Steam Link and the
Steam Controller and mountains of old
hype-filled articles to prove it was ever
more than a dream.
Slightly Mad doesn’t even have the prom-
ise of a hypothetical Half-Life 3 in its back
pocket. Bell claims Slightly Mad will release its
own cross-platform engine, capable of export-
ing games to Mad Box, Xbox, PlayStation, and
PC at the same time, but that’s a bold state-
ment with no proof as of yet. He also seems to
think simply offering this engine for free will
convince people to make games for the Mad
Box, even though Unity and Unreal are both
incredibly affordable these days, and well-es-
tablished engines with a lot of documentation.
Bell states outright that Slightly Mad won’t be
seeking out any exclusive games.
In short, it’s hard to take any of this MadAn alternate (and
less ugly) Mad
Box concept.