UPDATE: The company returned on January 4th, 2018: https://www.xadara.com/the-return-of-mad-catz/
Back on March 30th, 2017, video game hardware accessory maker Mad Catz announced it was closing, after filing Chapter 7 bankruptcy and being de-listed from the New York Stock Exchange. The company has been spiraling downhill for quite some time now, sadly, and while there are many elements to a company going out of business, and many things you can blame, the thing everyone seems to be focusing on is Rock Band 4. This oh-so beloved game series had an attempted resurgence a few years ago, and Mad Catz was brought on to make the actual equipment for the game – the guitars and drum kits used to play.
The game, to put it simply, flopped. Die hards bought it, but that was about it. Best I can gather from what people say is that this was the last thing Mad Catz needed – they were already in trouble financially – and the money lost through this was enough to make them insolvent, and that was the end of that.
Many Xbox 360 faceplates were made by Mad Catz, including this very rare “Zero Hour” faceplate.
I mention the company was already in trouble – they had for many years been seen as a poor quality option for game controllers, memory devices, and the like. While it’s certainly true that most anyone will say their recent hardware over the past 10-15 years has been sub par, their earlier Playstation 2 accessories and earlier were actually not that bad to me – Memory cards for the PS1 and PS2 were alright, their controllers, while odd, had good enough feel to them to be usable in place of an official controller, and many of their accessories seem to have held up better over time than official controllers. I don’t know, it just seems that as time passed people got to expect better, understandably, and the company just couldn’t deliver.
I would go into details here, but I think it would be better if you hunted yourself for reviews on some of their more recent controllers and judged for yourself. If you ever go to an old used game shop, see what 3rd party controllers might be lying around and I’ll bet some of them will be Mad Catz brand, and probably will still be in good shape.
Mad Catz probably had its best product run during the PS2 era.
I wish I had more to say here, but honestly, I don’t. It’s just a sad thing, really, but such is business, and the gaming world is pretty strict.