Mad Catz files for bankruptcy

[Buzzles]

Official announcement: here.

 

I suppose this isn't really much of an issue anymore, considering they sold their flight sim side (Saitek) over to Logitech back in September 2016.

 

Still a bit of a shame to see another hardware manufacturer go bump. I hear their mice and fightsticks (for Streetfighter and the like) are actually half decent.

[SkateZilla]

I've had nothing but Build quality issues with the Concole Controllers.

 

Selling Off Saitek was the nail in their coffin

[dburne]

Hate to see that, but seeing how Saitek went downhill after Mad Catz got them I guess not surprising.

They seemed to let quality go by the wayside.

[Flying Penguin]

Long time coming, but still a shame, their R.A.T. mice are the most comfortable mice I've ever used... That they look like the bastard love child of a Lamborghini and Barricade was merely a happy coincidence.

Edited April 4, 2017 by Flying Penguin

[Headwarp]

My only experience with Saitek brand products is when they were owned by MadCatz. That being said I took a vow of Never Saitek Again long before Logitech bought saitek up.

 

Maybe under Logitech's belt they will improve their quality control and software issues, but after my saitek experience.. I invested in peripherals I likely won't need to replace given proper TLC.

 

I actually enjoyed the rubberized grip and potential functionality of the x52 pro, unfortunately, potentiometers and plastic screw threads didn't hold up, and to be honest I never did the magnet mod and never really flew well with it.

 

Most of my logitech products have generally been pretty solid. A few bad apples here and there.. but I'm hoping Logitech + Saitek ends up being an improvement on Saitek's quality and Logitech's ingenuity. Personally, while it sucks that people may be out of jobs.. I will not miss Mad Catz.

 

 

IMO when shopping for my msffb2 on ebay I read some articles about how when MS announced discontinuing the sidewinder series it was due to the amount of competition on the market. From my viewpoint - Microsoft HAD no real competition. Even if made by plastic their sticks were mostly tanks. This second hand msffb2 that is getting near 2 decades old is my most accurate stick.. and still the best FFB joystick ever produced as far as I'm concerned. Microsoft was it's own competition. When I first started the MS Sidewinder 3d pro was the favorite. they made the precision pro and nobody liked it..so they discontinued the 3d pro and upon that announcement people bought them off the shelves til out of stock...stock piling 2-5 joysticks a piece.. my family even had extras for the 3 of us. The next real gem they had was their FFB stick.. then the MSFFB2, which people bought multiples of on the annoucement of discontinuation just like the 3d pro. I recently acquired an unused one someone finally decided to offload after all this time. With what they've done to the gaming community since "xbox" I hate to admit it... but at one point MS were the leaders of Innovation in the technical world. 15 years later the FFB in the msffb2 is still miles ahead of anything the competition put out. The stick lacks the excess of buttons we've grown accustomed to and people have taken to modding it... but I certainly wish MS would've paid attention to the sticks that flew off the shelves once people discovered we didn't have access to them anymore. I wish they still at least sold and supported this one stick if nothing else.. and perhaps added more buttons on the stick surface or interchangeable grips. But at least it's still a tank. Of the two I own.. one looks like someone may have chewed on the grip..scuffs indicating she took a bit of a beating. Works FINE.

Edited April 5, 2017 by Headwarp

[Nooch]

I've had their combat rudder pedal set for a while and boy was it flimsy and totally overpriced for what it was. The brake axis was jittery as hell and finally broke after a year of use. These guys didn't know what they were doing.

[Ce_Zeta]

Very sad. But that's happen when the Board of Directors madehis strategy only with inputs from excel sheets. Cold numbers.

 

I am dreaming with a rebranded Logitech X-65 with a minor redesign.

[Demon_]

I had a R.A.T 7. I lost the dpi switch after one month, and had double-clicking (when you single-clicking) on the left button after 5 months. Now she play in the garbage like a rat.

[Mars Exulte]

Sayonara and good riddance, imo. While the X-55 I have has been pretty reliable, everything else reeked of cheesy and poor design. Makes way for more VKB, Virpil, and Thrustmaster gear!

[myHelljumper]

X-55 : Drivers killed my file system and sticky throttle axis -> Sent back.

X-52 : Software keep stuck sending keyboard input crashing the computer -> Sent back.

Combat Rudder : After 1 year 2 axis on 3 gone mad -> To the trash

(All of the above were produced by Mad-Catz)

 

Wathog : The left throttle button died recently but Thrustmaster is sending me another one for free. -> Stick, driver and software are great.

CH Pro-pedal : Working great -> Better feel than the Combat Rudder, also cheaper.

 

I hope they sort their issues but I won't buy anything more coming from Saitek.

[Sokol1_br]

Maybe under Logitech's belt they will improve their quality control and software issues,

 

Don't forget that Logitech don't did this for their own G-940 - a product without direct concurrent, a Force Feedback HOTAS with pedals - and this product end rapid killed on the market due QC/manufacturing shortcomings issues (low cost pot, short wires bugged firmware...).

 

Not too different than MadCatz.

Edited April 6, 2017 by Sokol1_br

[joey45]

And that's the imho the only bad apple I have had from Logi.

[Dudikoff]

I've had varying experience with the Saitek products, their midrange HOTAS, panels and pedals were decent for the price (e.g. the X-36 or X52Pro, though they cheaped out too much on the rotaries), their cheaper stuff can be decent or borderline unusable (like the AV8R) and their high end stuff is quite good (X-65).

 

The only actual MadCatz products I've seen were bad (a RAT9 which straight out died within a year to a friend and some mobile phone wireless gamepad I got whose buttons are super low quality out of the box).