Mad-Catz goes bankrupt

Huh. I thought they closed down years ago. Guess not.
 
those mice were so scary, like one could go insane with all the adjustments
 
zamardii12 said:
Mad Catz controllers were always the ones I would give to my friends when they came over to play Nintendo or whatever console I had at the time. Won't be missed.
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Fighterstick from them is actually quite good. Used it to play Street fighters and never breaks after multiple sessions of hard smashing.
 
I never liked their designs, but it's actually damned hard to find good mice these days. And I still haven't had a truly flawless mouse.
 
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I have to admit that I wasn't 100% sure Mad Catz even still did anything relevant, when I saw this thread. Then again, I don't really do much with consoles these days so...
 
D4rkn3ss said:
those mice were so scary, like one could go insane with all the adjustments
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You're thinking of the R.A.T. mice by them. Love those. I actually have two (R.A.T. 7). One for work, and one for home. I have yet to be able to find a mouse that is as comfortable as that thing is once it's configured how I want it.
 
zamardii12 said:
Mad Catz controllers were always the ones I would give to my friends when they came over to play Nintendo or whatever console I had at the time. Won't be missed.
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Yep, this is what they are known for: making cheap garbage controllers you can give to your friends to use when they come over because you're too cheap/poor to buy real first party controllers.
 
shansoft said:
Fighterstick from them is actually quite good. Used it to play Street fighters and never breaks after multiple sessions of hard smashing.
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They had just announced their new end FightStick too. Their sticks are top notch, I still have my old MvC sticks and they have held up to some serious abuse. I hope someone picks up the team that works on those cause the Razer ones are just pure garbage.


Cmdrmonkey said:
Yep, this is what they are known for: making cheap garbage controllers you can give to your friends to use when they come over because you're too cheap/poor to buy real first party controllers.
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Funny enough, the Mad Catz Xbox controller was my favorite controller. It was the transparent white one. I used it for years because it was nice and small and the black/white buttons were positioned better. Never had a problem with it.
 
carlbme said:
You're thinking of the R.A.T. mice by them. Love those. I actually have two (R.A.T. 7). One for work, and one for home. I have yet to be able to find a mouse that is as comfortable as that thing is once it's configured how I want it.
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The R.A.T mice always seemed pretty decent -- while I never got one or tried one out, I knew a few folks who did, and liked them.
 
Well shit, Rock Band VR just came out for Oculus.. guess I better grab a Guitar controller for it while I still can.
 
carlbme said:
You're thinking of the R.A.T. mice by them. Love those. I actually have two (R.A.T. 7). One for work, and one for home. I have yet to be able to find a mouse that is as comfortable as that thing is once it's configured how I want it.
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I couldn't agree more. I have a RAT7 that I still use from time to time. It's very comfortable. I stopped using it on my gaming rig for two reasons. 1.) It doesn't have enough buttons. 2.) I hated the software / lack of onboard firmware to save settings. I tried the MMO7 and unfortunately I broke two of them. Their buttons just didn't hold up for me. I think they shrunk shit down too much and the quality just wasn't as good. The RAT7 has held up nicely despite my heavy usage of the thing.
 
MadCatz sold cheap BS accessories with janky options and buttons until the SF4 TE stick, and by then, they had basically nothing positive about them and it was too little, too late. Besides that, the SF TE stick was nothing more than a MadCatz particle board manufactured box, with sticks and buttons from someone else (pretty sure they were Sanwa but they may have been Seimitsu; I can't remember). Even then, Hori had been around forever making reliable quality sticks so it was always an uphill battle for MadCatz.
 
The RAT7 and MMO7 were the only products they ever made that I actually liked. I always hated their console peripherals. They felt cheap and never lasted very long.
 
Cmdrmonkey said:
Yep, this is what they are known for: making cheap garbage controllers you can give to your friends to use when they come over because you're too cheap/poor to buy real first party controllers.
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Yeah. The strangest controller I ever bought was back when I got Mario Kart on Nintendo 64 was this thing. Not a MadKatz controller (was made by a company called Performance). I remember that surprisingly this was a great controller to use with Mario Kart. That wheel at the top was turn-able like one of those controllers for a RC car or something. I used it quite a bit.

images
ultraracer64.jpg



As far as Mad-Catz goes... the worst controller and last controller I remember using of theirs was this one I bought for the N64 a long time ago. Was a massive piece of shit.

madcatz-nintendo-64-controller-black-54b3883d46ff69da3a9ce030eafa80a9.jpg
 
Lizard Testes said:
Aren't these the guys that were partnered with CIG to make Star Citizen joysticks and keyboards?
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If they were they should have sold virtual spaceships that will never see the light of day. There are better margins in that business. :)
 
Wow. As an old Street Fighter nut, that's pretty shocking. Their fightsticks have been THE standard in fight-game tournaments. Hope they come out of this OK.
 
MadCatz might as well have been 2 totally different companies during their lifespan. They started off making cut-rate garbage in the 80's and 90's. Nothing with their name on it was worth a damn.
Some other company bought them right around the turn of the century and they made a complete 180. The stuff from that point on became premium. Their fight sticks and pads are/were of excellent quality. In the fighting game world it's them, Hori, and Razr more or less.
 
Domingo said:
MadCatz might as well have been 2 totally different companies during their lifespan. They started off making cut-rate garbage in the 80's and 90's. Nothing with their name on it was worth a damn.
Some other company bought them right around the turn of the century and they made a complete 180. The stuff from that point on became premium. Their fight sticks and pads are/were of excellent quality. In the fighting game world it's them, Hori, and Razr more or less.
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This about perfectly sums it up. I'm sorry to see them go.
 
I bought an off-brand Xbox 360 controller from them once for my stepson to use with emulators on his PC.

Thing never worked quite right.
 
mizer357 said:
Wow. As an old Street Fighter nut, that's pretty shocking. Their fightsticks have been THE standard in fight-game tournaments. Hope they come out of this OK.
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There's always hori. I had a tournament stick and a hori. Proffered the hori more.
 
Really sad to see them go... wait no that's gas. I'm just really gassy.
 
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mizer357 said:
Wow. As an old Street Fighter nut, that's pretty shocking. Their fightsticks have been THE standard in fight-game tournaments. Hope they come out of this OK.
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Unless I am reading this incorrectly (bear with me, I am not fluent in Wall Street) this is not the type of bankruptcy where they are just looking to restructure their debt and come back on the other side. I believe they are going into full on liquidation. All officers and boardmembers have resigned. Essentially MadCatz is ceasing to exist.

They went through a period up to this point trying to find a buyer, or another way to solve the issue, but apparently they failed.
 
shansoft said:
Fighterstick from them is actually quite good. Used it to play Street fighters and never breaks after multiple sessions of hard smashing.
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Mostly because the fight sticks aren't even theirs. All Mad Catz did was take existing parts and products and slap them together with that name on them. The TE sticks are all Sanwa parts put into a shell. The fightpad and the lower end sticks were just rebrands of Hori products.

A lot of the stuff directly made by Mad Catz was pretty crap. Their Tritton brand? Crap. They ruined Saitek when they bought them. Saitek went from a quality peripheral maker with some decently made stuff to pretty much worthless under Mad Catz.

Fuck Mad Catz, I'm glad they're dead.
 
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It was always a matter of preference, but I felt Mad Catz made the best fightsticks. They just felt right, and they made modding them very simple (at least the high end models). Had a few of their TE models, and still have their Fightstick Alpha, which I picked up when SFV came out and I modded the crap out of it. Good news for Hori, I guess.

Their other peripherals I have no experience with... I understand beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but I wouldn't be caught dead with one of their mice on my desktop. The lit Razr logo on my mouse is about all I can handle :).
 
mizer357 said:
It was always a matter of preference, but I felt Mad Catz made the best fightsticks. They just felt right, and they made modding them very simple (at least the high end models). Had a few of their TE models, and still have their Fightstick Alpha, which I picked up when SFV came out and I modded the crap out of it. Good news for Hori, I guess.

Their other peripherals I have no experience with... I understand beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but I wouldn't be caught dead with one of their mice on my desktop. The lit Razr logo on my mouse is about all I can handle :).
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It's a common misconception but Mad Catz did not make the fight sticks. Fightpads (which were surprisingly good) and the non-TE sticks were Hori rebrands and the TE sticks were all made of Sanwa parts Mad Catz bought in bulk. Unlike other companies I could name *cough*Razer*cough* Mad Catz understood that the FGC would not accept low quality, cheap, fight sticks so Mad Catz turned to two reliable sources that were already popular. When Mad Catz cared they could put out some damn good stuff. Despite some early issues the RB4 controllers were apparently really solid and worked great. The problem is they very rarely cared and were more interested in producing cheap crap.
 
Two RAT7 mice = two dead RAT7 mice...
I also have an old Logitech G5 mouse around, that still works to this day (came in handy when the RATs died). so, I'm gentle with my hardware.
They're not completely dead, failed sensor on one and broken buttons on the other. I combined the two, till the second sensor started dying...

I really hope if somebody buys Mad-Catz they bump the quality up, as I would buy another RAT in a second (still haven't found another decent mouse with thumb and pinky rests, and not 500 buttons).
 
I haven't used much of there stuff but I did enjoy their Street fighter 4 fight pads.

It did however die on me just before SF V came out an now I'm using a Fight commander 4 (HORI) and its been great.
 
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Good riddance. Got burned by them every time I took a chance with their controllers. Janky junk.
 
Lizard Testes said:
Aren't these the guys that were partnered with CIG to make Star Citizen joysticks and keyboards?
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Technically, that was Saitek, who Mad-Catz recently sold to Logitech.

Hopefully, Logitech can unfuck Saitek's quality control, now that Mad-Catz is no longer augering them in to the ground -- three times in a row, I tried to buy a HOTAS set from them, and all three were returned for being completely broken.
 
Madcatz really was schizo. Their non-fightstick peripherals in general weren't worth anything, but I still use my original TE stick. For those saying "Madcatz didn't make it, those are Sanwa parts," Madcatz marketed them as containing Sanwa parts. It's not like they were trying to hide it, it was the main selling point. Those original TE sticks were so good and cheap it made it awfully tough to justify a custom stick. It cost as much to make it yourself as to just buy the Madcatz. I own an Hori VLX as well and use it on the couch, but the form factor of the Madcatz is perfect for traveling or for sitting at a computer.

I hope I never see another Madcatz SNES, N64, or PS peripheral again, but I'll miss their presence in the fightstick market.
 
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