http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2017-03-31-mad-catz-enters-bankruptcy

I still have my barely used Rock Band 4 guitar, which I guess was okay. I guess Harmonix did already change away from Mad Catz at some point, though, so maybe it wasn't that okay in general opinion. Basing this on my memory of the talk they had in Beastcast a month or two ago.

I guess they did something right at some point? Most of my memories related to their equipment has been people saying that it's garbage quality or ok at best.

The end of an era.

They always made decent stuff I thought.

Sad, but not surprising.

Bummer. They made some good fight sticks. But hey, I'm a pad player, so won't affect me personally.

Huh. The end of an era for sure, even if I never owned a ton of their stuff. The only MadCatz peripheral I ever owned was a wireless controller for the old PS2. I remember it felt really good to hold, but that the batteries were in a really weird pyramid configuration that was hard to get in with the way the case was shaped.

Guess my list of choices for a fight stick will be getting shorter. Sad because I eventually wanted to get a TE2, but won't have the money before prices jump way up.

That's sad, seems like a tough business to get into with no stable contracts. Their business model seemed a better fit for the more nascient home console business of the 90's with many substandard controllers. The peripherals business seems much more standardized by console manufacturers, and games that utilize racing wheels or flight sticks seem much less popular now than they were then.

It was a long time coming. The rise and fall of MCZ is a pretty interesting tale but poor business decisions/gambles spelled the end for the company.

It's a shame, their services to the fighting game scene are considerable.

They made some of the worst controllers on the original Xbox. I never bothered to get one of their controllers on the 360. They would break so easily and the sticks would peel off.

In recent years they made some spectacularly ugly 'gaming' mice and super tacky looking (and expensive) keyboards.

I mean, it's a hard market, especially in these days of consoles more or less locking down wireless options, but...

Just slowly paving the way for the supercorporation quartet future of Facebook, Google, Apple, Amazon. can't wait!

So......I sit here.....with my Mad Catz mouse mat....for my Mad catz Rat Pro S mouse (was a Rat 5 yet i worn that out over four years) .....typing on my Mad Catz Keyboard (Cyborg Keyboard V7 I love it and looks like its from star wars).....with my Mad Catz head phones (Freq 7 upgraded from Freq 5 and inherited a FUCKING ANNOYING BUZZ WHEN I PLUG THE MIC.) aaaaaaaand..........wee bit sad about this. I have been a Mad Catz whore for PC stuff for a few years now.....and loved the stuff (ASIDE FROM THE FUCKING HEADSET BUZZ!!!) sooooooooooooooooooooo well then. Time to find someone else to be a whore too.

You win for forum thread title of the year!

Gods can die

Huh, that's weird. They've always been around, although their reputation from when I first started hearing about them wasn't great.

I always enjoyed a good chuckle at a translucent green original xbox conroller. So extreme. Or the way they were able to take the sleek modern design of the dualshock and put in on blue steroids just to make sure I spend the extra twenty bucks on an actual ps2 controller.

What a shame. Mad Catz ran the gamut from absolute garbage to truly great peripherals, but their sheer omnipresence in gaming for so long made them all but synonymous with the industry.

I'm weirdly saddened by this, despite only ever owning any of their products by sheer chance. (I mean, they did put out a LOT of garbage between the gems, y'know...)

The only MadCatz product I ever bought was bad enough to make me forever swear off non-first-party controllers.

Mad Catz was a huge part of the gaming habits of my friends and I. We graduated high school during the PS2/Xbox/GCN era and Mad Catz was a lifesaver. This was the time where we had to start buying our own gaming peripherals and I remember they would sell controllers that were 50% cheaper than the first-parties. Sure the quality was garbage and most weren't comfortable to hold, but we wouldn't have been able to afford local multiplayer without them. I always found their Rock Band equipment to be well made as well.

Good riddance. Even their "best" work (that I know of) was the Rock Band instruments, and yet even by the 4th game they were flawed by design. They never have made a quality product that I know of, unless they were competing with REAL junk!

I'm curious because I've seen people say this, and I have (unfortunately) plenty of experience with their products for many many years now. What were their superior quality products? I certainly didn't try even nearly everything they made, but all I did try, especially Instruments, was junk.

@zombievac: their fightsticks that they began producing with Street Fighter 4 are considered the gold standard. I have one of the originals myself and still use it all the time with my PC: thing feels like it will likely outlive me.

Sad to hear it. I love my mad catz mouse. Sure they used to be known for shitty 3rd party controllers but I liked their PC components.

Better than Hori? I'm not a fight stick person, but I'd guess those are an easy one to get right compared to most... you just have to source good parts for the buttons and such - and those are well-known and discussed endlessly in the fighting game enthusiast community. Fight sticks are likely easier to design and manufacture than almost everything else they've ever made, if I were to guess. Unless the made their own button switches and such, instead of buying them from an established partner like Hori... and did it better than the previous preferred standard, which I thought was Hori (but I really don't know)?

Anyway, glad they were able to make some people happy!

@hassun said:

Absolutely, I hope some intrepid writer somewhere puts it together. I remember MCZ originally as making the controllers you didn't want to get when you went to a friends house. It was amazing to me that they turned it so far around from there and had such a solid reputation during SFIV.

@dave_tacitus: dude, lol, thanks for the reminders

@zombievac: I'm unsure how long this has been the case but MCZ fight sticks use Sanwa parts recently.

@glots: Good title!

I've bought a lot of gaming junk over the years and somehow never owned anything by Mad Catz?

@glots: A+ for the topic name.

I never used their controllers, but it's a shame console updates and wireless connectivity are making alternative accessory options harder to come by. I don't like the console monopolies.