Update: I was sure the financial news would be grim from Mad Catz, but I didn’t think it’d be this grim. According to Gamasutra, Mad Catz is cutting their staff by 37% in an effort to save money going forward. This will save the company around $5 million a year and hopefully allow them to start paying down their debt. There is some good news for Mad Catz, yearly sales were up 114% compared to the previous year. Some of that will probably continue to go up with Street Fight V on the horizon but Mad Catz needs to do something if they want to stay afloat.
Original Story: Just a day before Mad Catz is set to release an earnings report, CEO Darren Richardson, chairman Thomas Brown, and senior VP of business affairs Whitney Peterson all resigned. In a press release that still touts tomorrow’s earnings report, Mad Catz is claims to be thankful for Richardson, Brown, and Peterson’s work and reveals their replacements.
This all comes after a recent history with debt that Mad Catz was hoping to pull themselves out of by co-publishing Rock Band 4 alongside the game’s developer, Harmonix. No official word on how Rock Band 4’s sales impacted today’s resignations but I doubt this is all a coincidence. Mad Catz was criticized for producing below average instruments for Rock Band 4, and when the co-publishing deal was announced, Mad Catz were very straightforward about needing Rock Band to sell very well to survive.
