Gaming hardware brand Mad Catz makes unexpected return to the market with new 2018 product lineup

Can the defunct controller company Mad Catz spend one of its nine lives in order to make a comeback?

(Credit: Mad Catz Global Limited)

If you've spent any time gaming during the last three decades, you're likely familiar with Mad Catz. Since 1989, the Hong Kong-headquartered brand has made peripheral video gaming products: controllers, memory cards, connectors and cables, headphones, and other related devices for PC and various console platforms.

Over the years, Mad Catz has produced award-winning lines of gaming products, like their R.A.T. gaming mice. In many cases, the licensed 3rd-party controllers they made for PS2, GameCube, and others were more advanced and reliable than the OEM equipment that shipped with the console. Mad Catz products have proven so popular that they have even been counterfeited and sold on eBay and elsewhere.

In recent years, Mad Catz's future looked bright: they acquired GameShark in 2003, produced the official Rock Band 3 controllers in 2010, and sponsored the first ESL One eSports tournament in 2014. With their longevity and continued success, it looked like Mad Catz would be around for some time.

Then the company reached a deal with Harmonix to co-publish 2015's Rock Band 4, with Mad Catz assuming much of the risk by taking on responsibility for all physical retail sales, promotion, and distribution. This decision would prove to be disastrous, handing Mad Catz an $11.6 million loss in 2015 and essentially causing the 25-year-old gaming company to start crumbling from the top down within a few months of the game's release.

After poor sales numbers on Rock Band 4 caused "higher inventory balances as well as lower margins due to increased promotional activity," the company fired several top executives and laid off 37% of its workforce in a February 2016 restructuring. Later that year, Mad Catz sold off its Saitek brand of simulation controllers and joysticks to Logitech for $13 million.

Despite the major staffing shakeups and Hail-Mary deal with Logitech, Mad Catz wasn't able to pull out of its death spiral. The company was delisted from the New York Stock Exchange for "abnormally low" stock values in March 2017, and Mad Catz filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy less than a week later.

In many cases, that would be the end of the story--just another failed gaming company gone the way of Brøderbund, 3DO, or Atari. However, it seems the former employees of Mad Catz weren't quite ready to let their hard work and history with the company go down the drain. On January 4th, 2018, longtime Mad Catz spokesperson Alex Verrey issued a press release announcing the rebirth of the company as "Mad Catz Global Limited."

Mad Catz is back: under new management, with new ideas, new attitude and most importantly, an entire range of new, high-quality gaming products!

According to the press release, Mad Catz will be unveiling a new line of products at next week's CES 2018 tech conference in Las Vegas. A sneak-peek video featuring a few of these products was put on the company's revamped website the same day.

Over at CNET, Sean Hollister spoke to Verrey to get more details on the unexpected rebirth of Mad Catz. In a surprising and unprecedented move, former workers from Mad Catz's Chinese factories actually banded together to form a holding company and purchase nearly all of the company's remaining assets. According to Verrey, fans of the company's products should expect the same quality they've grown used to with their new lineup: "The new guys understand the products because they were the ones who made them." The same factories and parts will be used in the retooled production process.

At CES 2018, the company plans to demonstrate around a dozen new gadgets--including new iterations of their popular S.T.R.I.K.E. keyboards, F.R.E.Q. gaming headsets, and R.A.T. gaming mice. It appears that most, if not all of these products were already in development at Mad Catz before it shut down in 2017. The company's featured attraction in Vegas will be the R.A.T. AIR gaming mouse, which can run both wirelessly and battery-free in conjunction with a powered and LED-lit USB mousepad. The R.A.T. Pro mouse will be back as well, with the "X3" version also set to premiere at CES 2018.

While gamers will no doubt be delighted at Mad Catz's new lease on life, it remains to be seen if the company can generate success with their new product line--or if they can continue to offer innovative new gaming technology once their stash of already-developed ideas and designs runs out. As CNET's Hollister points out, much of the former Mad Catz design team either went over to Logitech along with Saitek, or formed their own tech ventures like LucidSound. However, Verrey says that Mad Catz Global Limited already has a talented new design team on board--and is also in discussions with some of their former employees.

At any rate, it's definitely exciting to see the resurrection of Mad Catz, and it will be interesting to see the first hands-on looks at their new product slate from CES 2018 next week.

What do you think of the unexpected Mad Catz revival? Can they make it work, or are these former employees only prolonging the inevitable? What was your favorite Mad Catz product from years gone by? Let me know in the comments!