The Last Throes of Mad Catz

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monkeymagick

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Almost all of us has had our own run-ins with Mad Catz's less than spectacular peripherals. Usually, the worst one of the group is handed one of these controllers during a multiplayer session.

Eurogamer has a story up about the final days of Mad Catz. The company had been struggling with financial woes for awhile. Its last product push was banking on the success of Rock Band 3 and the revival of fake musical instruments. At last the market did not take off and the company filed for bankruptcy in March of this year.


"Where you had other companies who were smaller than Mad Catz at the time, like Razer, who were correctly doubling down on the things that made them popular, Mad Catz was trying to explore too many different avenues but without the expertise or the financing needed to be successful.
 
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I still have an old PS1 oversized memory card made by Mad Catz. I think I kept it because of how flawed it was. After you saved over 32 slots on the PS1, it would erase the entire card. I have no idea why, but I never threw it away. It's about 20 feet away from me in my retro console area. Also have some of their controllers from PS1 and PS2 era. Never really saw them much after that or maybe Amazon eclipsed everything so I stopped going to EB Games (now GameStop) where they were being sold. Sad to see companies like them die because of the memories, but not exactly sad to see them go, kinda like RadioShack.
 
They were just knock offs. Thanks to Amazon and eBay, you can cut out the middleman and get them straight from China.

The problem with Mad Catz is that they never had any passion for their product. Compare them to a company like 8bitdo with their unbeatable craftsmanship and it isn't difficult to see why they've failed.
 
Goodlookinguy said:
I still have an old PS1 oversized memory card made by Mad Catz. I think I kept it because of how flawed it was. After you saved over 32 slots on the PS1, it would erase the entire card. I have no idea why, but I never threw it away. It's about 20 feet away from me in my retro console area. Also have some of their controllers from PS1 and PS2 era. Never really saw them much after that or maybe Amazon eclipsed everything so I stopped going to EB Games (now GameStop) where they were being sold. Sad to see companies like them die because of the memories, but not exactly sad to see them go, kinda like RadioShack.
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I thought Mad Catz wasn't as bad with their recent products. The line of TE tournament sticks were pretty good for what you got. Gameshark was the shit back in the day.
 
I've been a huge fan of the RAT line of mice. The sniper button works extraordinarily well as a DPI toggle for things like photo editing. I've since moved to Razer for mice, and I've never seen the point of their many console peripherals, but still a little sad to see them go.
 
last mad katz thing i bought was a ps3 controller that ended up having lots of leds that made it light up. I ended up opening it up and ripping oit all the leds. So annoying to use when its glowing like sun.

it is a pretty shit quality controller.
 
monkeymagick said:
I thought Mad Catz wasn't as bad with their recent products. The line of TE tournament sticks were pretty good for what you got. Gameshark was the shit back in the day.
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I hadn't tried anything past PS2 era, so I thought they just kept chugging along with the same quality. Speaking of GameShark, I have about 7 different versions about 20 feet away from me in my retro area as well. I think they still work. Also have GameGenie, cartridge cleaners, and all sorts of accessories (1, 2).
 
I just wish someone would duplicate the steel battalion controller for the PC and reboot that game based on the line of contact expansion. That was a damned good mech sim.

Now that madcatz is out of the picture the chances of that controller being well made are drastically increased... Though it will likely never happen.
 
Their Tournament Edition arcade stick lineup was great. I was going to buy the Tekken 7 TE2+ with the Namco Noir button layout, but now I will just mod my SC5/TT2 TEs with Brook Universal boards. They are absolute tanks and my favorite case design for use with Japan lever/buttons (etokki if I use Korean parts). I have seen products and parts being liquidated on various eBay and Amazon accounts since the beginning of this year. LOL, the site is still up. http://www.madcatz.com/fightsticks/tekken7.php
 
Mad Catz also bought Saitek and cranked out low-quality versions of the cyborg 3D. I had a game-port version of the stick from when it was still made by Saitek, and the later Madcatz version was nowhere near it in quality.
 
As said by other's their fight sticks were/are amazing my Street Fighter IV stick still works like brand new, regret never picking a 2nd one up.
 
blkt said:
Their Tournament Edition arcade stick lineup was great. I was going to buy the Tekken 7 TE2+ with the Namco Noir button layout, but now I will just mod my SC5/TT2 TEs with Brook Universal boards. They are absolute tanks and my favorite case design for use with Japan lever/buttons (etokki if I use Korean parts). I have seen products and parts being liquidated on various eBay and Amazon accounts since the beginning of this year. LOL, the site is still up. http://www.madcatz.com/fightsticks/tekken7.php
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Damn right. I run the Brooks Universal Board on an old TES, the only issue I have is when sometimes an update for the PS4 breaks connection. At least Brooks is quick with the firmware updates. Most of my buttons and joysticks have Seimitsu boards, I"m not too much of a fan of Sanwa parts, which the sticks come default with.
 
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The problem with Mad Catz is they started out as a fly-by-night operation that glamorized near-patent-infrengment knockoff crap with fancy packaging and a healthy markup in price. When the cash started rolling in, they continued on that same path. You can only sell shit-tier for so long before the consumer base catches on.

They should have turned their heyday profits towards R&D of actual quality follow-up products, instead of continually reaching out to the turd grinder manufacturers for the same old junk but with added gimmicks and flashier packaging.
 
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