Logitech Buys Saitek From Mad Catz For $13 Million
Logitech’s recent line of gaming products includes mice, keyboards, and even a few racing wheels. However, it seems like it will be adding some new products to its lineup soon. The company struck a deal with Mad Catz to buy the Saitek brand and products for $13 million in cash.
Saitek’s current lineup includes flight and space simulator controllers such as the latest X-56 Rhino hands-on-throttle-and-stick (HOTAS) peripheral and even a wheel for Farming Simulator. The addition of Saitek to the Logitech G brand makes sense, as it would add more simulation-based products to the company's portfolio. At the moment, Logitech’s sim-based inventory includes the G29 and G920 racing wheels and the Extreme 3D Pro Joystick.
Mad Catz’s fortunes started to turn for the worse earlier this year. A day before its quarterly financial call in February, Darren Richardson, Thomas Brown, and Whitney Peterson resigned from their positions as president and CEO, chairman, and senior vice president of business affairs, respectively. The next day’s earnings call revealed that the change at the executive level was part of a restructuring plan to cut 37% of the company’s total workforce in order to focus on “lowering operating costs, increasing efficiencies and better aligning its workforce with the needs of the business.”
Mad Catz’s bread and butter was its partnership with the Rock Bandfranchise. In the third fiscal quarter of 2016, the company boasted a net sales increase of 114%, or $65 million, which was its second-highest quarterly net sales in history. Despite the high sales numbers, the amount of products sold along with the new Rock Band 4 game was lower than expected. In March, the company took a major hit when Harmonix, the development team for Rock Band, announced Performance Designed Products (PDP) as its new partner for Rock Band peripherals. The change in peripheral partners meant that Mad Catz was losing money more than ever.
For Mad Catz, the sale of Saitek means that it has some money in its pocket after its recent losses. As for Logitech, it’s an opportunity to expand its product line with new peripherals and gain an even bigger fanbase.
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Rexly Peñaflorida is a freelance writer for Tom's Hardware covering topics such as computer hardware, video games, and general technology news.
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TechyInAZ Oh wow. Now I'm curious what logitech will start pumping out, joystick wise.Reply
I've owned both Saitek joysticks and logitech joysticks and both are really good sticks. -
thundervore AH crap!!Reply
I remember when Saitek was awesome. I still have my Saitek Evo 2 control stick where I still use it to play Jane's Combat Simulator to this very day.
Now they are in the hands of Logitech im so worried what they will do.
Don't get me wrong, im a Logitech fan I just don't trust their build quality, I have:
two M705 (best wireless battery life mouse ive used for $20),
Performance Mouse Mx (Worst mouse ive used in regard to left click issues on 3 of them),
MX Revolution (now my daily driver after replacing the internal battery),
K800 (the 9 key in the number row no longer works),
K305 (nice compact keyboard still strong after 3 years)
Harmony 700 (still going strong for about 3 years plus)
Z5500 (Awesome sound system)
X540 (Awesome computer sound system) -
synphul Sounds like madcatz is in a hot mess right now. Between losing senior management in that fashion and then basically losing saitek. Last summer madcatz got the deal to work with cloud imperium making controllers for star citizen within the saitek line so I guess that honeymoon is over. Coupled with the fact they took a loss on saitek, selling it for half of what they paid for it 9yrs ago. Even a nastier loss when you factor inflation. That on top of being replaced for the rockstar peripherals. Ouch.Reply
Nice deal for logitech though. Their products have been pretty solid so not too worried. If anything saitek is probably in better hands now. I still use one of their more budget flight sticks and it continues to work well some 10-11 yrs later but it was an actual saitek stick, before madcatz bought them out. -
WFang My first thought : What happens now to the Star Citizen HOTAS and will it affect any such deals in the transition.Reply -
bloodroses With the build quality, I actually trust Logitech's better than I do MadCatz; especially in the mice department. The MadCatz fighting sticks have been great though.Reply
I've owned one Saitek product, and that was the Eclipse II keyboard. After about 6 months, the G,H keys wouldn't work unless they were pressed very hard. Slowly after that, the keys next to those did the same and so forth until the keyboard became an absolute pain to use. This was when Saitek was under MatCatz ownership. -
beoir There are a few variables for this to work out. Saitek's quality controls have dropped off a bit, so hopefully Logitech will improve them. Logitech has the tendency to cheap out on the materials for the designs, in order to pump out a large scale product. Hopefully, that won't wear on the performance quality. Logitech has better vendor support, distribution, and usually decent complimentary software packages. if they exceed on all of these points then the first gen HOTAS they put out (or rebrand) may be a decent buy.Reply -
falchard I used to use Saitek until MadCatz took over. Their build quality became shit. I was 3/3 in defect rate with their products, so I stopped using them entirely. Hopefully that turns around. Saitek made the first keyboard for me I liked. The Eclipse. I have been using Mechanicals since then.Reply