Mad Catz is back from the dead

Hardware maker Mad Catz, which filed for bankruptcy and shut down in March 2017, is back. The company, now known as Mad Catz Global Limited and headquartered in Kowloon, Hong Kong, announced a new line of products today.

Mad Catz will be at next week’s Consumer Electronics Show with new PC gaming hardware: RAT mice, STRIKE keyboards, FREQ gaming headsets and GLIDE gaming surfaces. The company said in a release that “the new Mad Catz will focus first on quality, committed to producing innovative gaming products, designed and engineered in-house to stand out amongst the competition and deliver superlative performance for gamers of all abilities.”

The company didn’t announce new arcade sticks as part of its new line, which helped the company gain a reputation as a serious hardware manufacturer, but did mention the FightStick brand in today’s announcement.

“We couldn’t be more excited than to begin 2018 by announcing the return of Mad Catz to the global gaming arena,” said Selena Chang, director of sales and operations for Mad Catz Global Limited, in a release. “Mad Catz has been a permanent fixture in gaming for almost three decades and we firmly believe it’s best days lie ahead. Through listening to gamers worldwide, we plan to once again forge a path of innovation in the gaming hardware community, and we’re already working on delivering products which we believe will enhance gamers’ abilities and do justice to the Mad Catz name.”

According to a report from Cnet, the new Mad Catz is made up of former employees who worked at the company’s Chinese factories. “They saw an opportunity to keep doing what they’d already been doing -- but now they’ll be working for themselves,” Cnet reported.

The original Mad Catz was founded in 1989. The company shut down in 2017 in the wake of massive losses tied to big bets on Rock Band 4, which it published and manufactured controllers for. The company laid off many of its employees in 2016.