Mad Catz Is Back From The Dead

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rgMekanic

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In quite a surprise, peripheral maker Mad Catz is using one of it's 9 lives to come back this year. After the company went bankrupt in March of 2017, nearly all the companies assets were bought by a Chinese holding company that wanted to keep the brand alive. The holding company is composed of people who worked for the Chinese factories, company spokesman Alex Verrey said "It's not like people are just using the Mad Catz name to push out a new and unrelated range of products."


I think it's pretty awesome that a bunch of the factory workers got together to save the company. And the products look really interesting too. I had always lusted over a R.A.T 9, but never pulled the trigger. The new R.A.T Air definitely has my attention.

The company's website is now live with details about each of its new products, including 8 mice, 2 keyboards, 2 headsets and several mousepads. Yes, Mad Catz is actually making a set of earbuds with a boom mic for competitive gamers, and bringing back the Rat Pro mouse (now Rat Pro X3) with its swappable sensors, analog scroll wheel and swappable teflon or ceramic feet.
 
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cool beans never bought any of their stuff maybe make the mouse community on overclock.net happy about mice again.
 
lmao @ "Enlarge your show off" on the rat air page.

Cool story that the factory folks got together to keep the company going, sounds more like a feel good movie plot than something that would happen in rl.
 
After looking at the mice looks like the same edgy stuff the have been pushing out for the past 20+ years
 
Well, I have a "cheap" Chinese mouse from UtechSmart that is hands down the best mouse I've ever used. I'm not a huge fan of the Mad Catz design philosophy though. I'm far too delicate for all those pointy bits.

People do tend to forget that China has some damned good companies and exceptional craftsmen. They're just like most places though, you get what you pay for.
 
Mouses look too big for me (only one that doesn't give me cramps is a Razer Orochi). I need a new keyboard though, something that will last longer than a year but not heavy like mechanical so I'll keep an eye on their keyboard.
 
Does this mean I will finally be able to buy new individual Rock Band peripherals again? PDP still isn't selling drum kits for some god forsaken reason...
 
I know the fighting game community is excited about some of their arcade sticks...which they conveniently left off their website.
Their mice and keyboards seem interesting, but I'm really only interested in wireless models these days.

As far as the brand name goes, I think opinions vary depending on how old you are. Back in the 90's and early 00's anything and everything they made was straight up junk. I know a lot of people that still think they are. It was only about 10 years ago that their brand actually made anything that didn't suck.
 
Kill it. Kill it with fire.

Devilpup said:
lmao @ "Enlarge your show off" on the rat air page.

Cool story that the factory folks got together to keep the company going, sounds more like a feel good movie plot than something that would happen in rl.
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It's marketing.
 
GREAT! Now we can continue to enjoy cheap plastic gaming accessories that break after 3 months of use!
 
Armenius said:
Does this mean I will finally be able to buy new individual Rock Band peripherals again? PDP still isn't selling drum kits for some god forsaken reason...
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Nope. PDP owns the rights to produce Rock Band stuff now. I doubt MadCatz will ever produce them again seeing as Rock Band is what killed the company.
 
Domingo said:
As far as the brand name goes, I think opinions vary depending on how old you are. Back in the 90's and early 00's anything and everything they made was straight up junk. I know a lot of people that still think they are. It was only about 10 years ago that their brand actually made anything that didn't suck.
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Basically this. If we made you play with the Mad Katz controller it’s just cause we hated you. They never worked right. The only semi advantage was they normally had turbo or super buttons. The stocks were atrocious on the N64 controller I had. Needless to say I never got another.
 
Krazy925 said:
Basically this. If we made you play with the Mad Katz controller it’s just cause we hated you. They never worked right. The only semi advantage was they normally had turbo or super buttons. The stocks were atrocious on the N64 controller I had. Needless to say I never got another.
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A friend of mine in high school kept buying their cheap-o SNES pads rather than just dropping the extra $10 for literally any other pads. I bet he went through 5-6 of those things while I kept my stock SNES pads for the life of the console. We banned turbo and macro buttons for anything competitive, so it's not like those features mattered. The Ascii Pad was the best item if you wanted that stuff anyway.
Buttons would start sticking or just flat-out stop working. In at least one case one fell off. I've seen many a controller take flight during a heated Street Fighter match, but I've never seen one full-on shatter except a Mad Catz pad.
That tradition continued with the Playstation 1 and 2, Saturn, Dreamcast, N64 and even all the way to the early days of the PS3. It wasn't until they bought another company in the late '00s when their controllers became worthwhile.
 
Domingo said:
A friend of mine in high school kept buying their cheap-o SNES pads rather than just dropping the extra $10 for literally any other pads. I bet he went through 5-6 of those things while I kept my stock SNES pads for the life of the console. We banned turbo and macro buttons for anything competitive, so it's not like those features mattered. The Ascii Pad was the best item if you wanted that stuff anyway.
Buttons would start sticking or just flat-out stop working. In at least one case one fell off. I've seen many a controller take flight during a heated Street Fighter match, but I've never seen one full-on shatter except a Mad Catz pad.
That tradition continued with the Playstation 1 and 2, Saturn, Dreamcast, N64 and even all the way to the early days of the PS3. It wasn't until they bought another company in the late '00s when their controllers became worthwhile.
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You could always tell it was mad katz cause it had LEDs fucking everywhere and felt like warm dog shit in your hands.

God those things were terrible.

Glad to have competition back in the market lol
 
Devilpup said:
lmao @ "Enlarge your show off" on the rat air page.
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A lot of the Air page is in really mangled engrish. I hope they are better at making mice than foreign languages. Those really "80's B-movie sci-fi" looking mice always struck me as looking very unergonomic but the ones I fooled with at the computer stores always seemed deceptively comfortable. I'm in sort of a gaming mouse rut with my PC at home so I'll be looking at their wired stuff.
 
Has anyone ever used the adjustable mouse before? If so how much adjusment is there? Can I get it to feel comfortable for a large hand? I am tired of all these mice that don't fit my hand properly.
 
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Krazy925 said:
Basically this. If we made you play with the Mad Katz controller it’s just cause we hated you. They never worked right. The only semi advantage was they normally had turbo or super buttons. The stocks were atrocious on the N64 controller I had. Needless to say I never got another.
Click to expand...

Had many of the same experiences. Back in the day when I lived with roommates we had many different consoles on hand and that was usually the case when we'd try a cheap one to add for more players. Once I moved on and also went back to PC gaming I continued to have much of the same till I finally gave in and got xbox controllers. All 'n' all though, I'm glad they're back. It seems like there's a million mouse/keyboard vendors but far too little for controllers and congrats to the workers for making it happen. I hope it turns out well for them.
 
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I just remember their controllers back in the day were pretty low quality compared to the OEM ones.
 
My god, that webpage is almost English...

What got my attention was the wireless, battery-less mouse that uses wireless power from a mousepad. That's actually kind of cool, even if it had to happen eventually.
 
Who owns Saitek nowaday? I remember Mad Catz bought them awhile back. It would be cool if they re-manufactor the original Saitek eclipse keyboard except this time with mechanica keyboard switches and mabye RGB backlight.
 
beyonddc said:
Who owns Saitek nowaday? I remember Mad Catz bought them awhile back. It would be cool if they re-manufactor the original Saitek eclipse keyboard except this time with mechanica keyboard switches and mabye RGB backlight.
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LOL, my wife still has one of those. Still looks great and works 14'ish years later. I'd welcome a remake for sure. Hell, give me a wireless option while they're at it.
 
Domingo said:
LOL, my wife still has one of those. Still looks great and works 14'ish years later. I'd welcome a remake for sure. Hell, give me a wireless option while they're at it.
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I remember everyone use to own the Saitek Eclipse back in the late 90s and early 00s.
 
Krazy925 said:
https://www.theverge.com/circuitbre...ir-mouse-freq-strike-chinese-company-ces-2018

The verge is calling it similar. Where are you seeing the Mad Catz doesn’t have a battery? That doesn’t sound super useful IMO.

Without a battery if it ever lost contact with the charging it would die.
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With a battery you are limited by the battery, the mouse "dying" just means you need to keep things connected, perhaps not lift the mouse too far off the charging surface, worst case, add a usb cable that is removable if needed.
 
They now have a shitload of competitors that do the job much better.

Why was this brand worth saving again? There are over a hundred different peripheral brands on Newegg, so the market is flooded.
 
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defaultluser said:
They now have a shitload of competitors that do the job much better.

Why was this brand worth saving again? There are over a hundred different peripheral brands on Newegg, so the market is flooded.
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Might be flooded, but it ain't flooded with quality gaming products.
 
beyonddc said:
Who owns Saitek nowaday? I remember Mad Catz bought them awhile back. It would be cool if they re-manufactor the original Saitek eclipse keyboard except this time with mechanica keyboard switches and mabye RGB backlight.
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Logitech bought Saitek a couple years ago. They got them pretty cheap too, only $13m.
 
Most gaming peripheral companies are cranking out the same stuff. I welcome anyone who is willing to do things a bit different. That goes for mice, gamepads, keyboards, and all things in-between. Mad Catz might not be that company, but I hope they can try to be.
 
lcpiper said:
With a battery you are limited by the battery, the mouse "dying" just means you need to keep things connected, perhaps not lift the mouse too far off the charging surface, worst case, add a usb cable that is removable if needed.
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Where are you guys seeing that the Mad Catz won’t have a battery at all?

Also occasionally playing games I lift up my mouse gaming to either recenter it or such nonsense. Not having a battery means any interruption to the power and it will die. A battery sounds necessary.

Also can the 90s spelling of this company DIAF. I don’t miss the days of every company having a C or K instead of the correct one and Z’s being used as S’s. Marketers in the 90s were such idiots.
 
It will be very hard to rewire my brain to not associate Mad Catz with their janky ass console controllers.
 
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