Wii U an ‘Opportunity’

Mad Catz Sees Aggressive Holiday Promotions Coming in Game Sector

November 10, 2011 by Rebecca Day and Jeff Berman|Top News

There will be aggressive pricing promotions this holiday season among videogame products industrywide in the U.S., predicted Mad Catz Interactive Vice President of Marketing Michael Greco. But he told us Mad Catz doesn’t plan any significant price drops on its “premium” accessories, including those it spotlighted at CEA’s CES Unveiled event in New York on Tuesday.

At the event, Mad Catz bowed a Cyborg-branded M.M.O. 7 Gaming Mouse, targeted at massively multiplayer online gamers, that spokesman Alex Verrey said will ship next month for PCs and Macs. Pricing wasn’t given. Mad Catz also showed a version of its Cyborg-branded R.A.T. 7 Gaming Mouse just for Macs, called the Albino due to its white color; a Tritton-branded Xbox 360 Warhead 7.1 wireless surround headset; and a Mad Catz-Major League Gaming (MLG) Pro Circuit controller for the PS3 and Xbox 360.

The MLG Pro Circuit controller is targeted at the “luxury high-end tournament” market and features customizable features including face plates, Verrey said. Users can “swap out” the controller’s D-pads and analog sticks and move them around to different places on the controller or replace them with other components in different colors and textures, he said. The controllers will ship in time for Christmas. The price wasn’t given, but Verrey said it’s a “premium” product, so the pricing will be set accordingly, although the cost will be “affordable” and “justifiable” for the target customers.

The suggested retail pricing on premium accessories like these “will scare away retailers” -- until consumers show that they want the product, said Greco. He pointed to the $150 Mad Catz StreetFighter IV FightStick that some people initially thought was too high-priced to find much demand, but went on to be a huge seller for the company. “We can’t keep enough in stock,” he said. Several bricks-and-mortar and e-commerce retailers expressed interest in carrying the new Tritton headset and MLG controllers, he said.

Initially, the MLG controllers will only be sold direct from Mad Catz, but starting Thursday they were to be made available for preorder at Amazon.com, Greco said. BestBuy.com will start taking preorders for them in early December ahead of their mid-December shipment, he said.

Apple will sell the Albino controller at its online store, Greco also said, telling us it was the first time that the manufacturer had sold a Mad Catz product in “a couple of years.” The controller, at $99.99, is “not cheap,” but Apple customers are used to premium pricing, he said.

The overall game market is “a little bit slow,” but the situation is “a little bit different” for Mad Catz thanks to its decision to focus on premium-priced products, Greco said. The PS3 and Xbox 360 continued to perform well, while demand for the Wii continued to be soft, he said.

Mad Catz sees the coming Wii U as an “opportunity” for the accessory company because the new Nintendo console will likely attract more hardcore gamers than the Wii, Greco said. If that happens, it may make sense for Mad Catz to field premium accessories for the Wii U like the company now does for the PS3 and 360, he said.

Mad Catz, meanwhile, is “committed to supporting” the coming PlayStation Vita, and “we look forward to its success,” Greco said. But the company didn’t announce specific accessories for Sony’s coming handheld system yet. -- Jeff Berman

CES Unveiled Notebook

InMotion Entertainment will be the first retailer to sell Monster Digital-branded memory cards, Mike Ridling, president of SDJ Technologies subsidiary Monster Digital, told us. InMotion sells electronics and accessories, and rents and sells entertainment media at multiple U.S. stores located in airports. Ridling’s company is “working on a bunch” of other retail deals and thinks its products will be carried at multiple retail accounts by Christmas, he said. It’s targeting major regional CE retailers first and expects that “big-box” retailers will follow in 2012, he said. E-retailers are expected also, he said. Monster recently signed a long-term deal with SDJ to license the Monster brand name to SDJ for use in a line of memory storage products (CED Nov 3 p7). The first products carrying the new Monster Digital brand bowed Tuesday at CES Unveiled, and included SD and microSD cards. The SD cards features SKUs in capacities of 8-128 GB, while the microSD cards are 4-16 GB. Monster planned to support the Monster Digital products with “the full weight” of its brand name, including its retail distribution network, training, marketing and customer service resources, CEO Noel Lee said last week. SDJ has a long history in storage technology, and for the last 10 years or so it’s focused on designing memory cards. But Ridling said his company needed a brand name, so it signed the licensing deal with Monster. The Monster deal is SDJ’s first licensing deal and the company is shifting “95 percent of its focus to Monster,” he said. SDJ has been OEMing cards for other unspecified brand name companies “for years,” he said. The Monster Digital cards will sell for about 15 percent higher than other cards on the market, he said. “A lot of our competitors are building their cards cheaper today. They're all trying to build them cheaper, so we decided to go the other way.” Rivals’ cards “don’t run as fast,” he said, telling us Monster Class 10 cards have read/write speeds of 10 MB per second compared with Class 4 and Class 6 cards from competitors. Monster cards “cost more to build because they use better components and the plastic is heavier,” he said. The company will start selling the Class 10 SD cards on Black Friday, he said. At CES, the company will introduce a high-end line of CompactFlash cards for pro photographers that will be five times faster than SD cards, he also said.

Polaroid bowed the 14-megapixel Z340 instant camera that started shipping at $299.99. The camera was built with a Zink printer inside that features the same Zero Ink technology that Polaroid introduced in its $169.99 GL10 instant mobile printer early this year. Other features on the camera include a 2.7-inch LCD screen. Polaroid President Scott Hardy said at PhotoPlus last month that his company would bow a camera at CES Unveiled that incorporated the Zink printing technology (CED Oct 31 p2). -- JB

Audiovox showed a new twist on the under-cabinet kitchen music system with a Bluetooth-based audio system that wirelessly streams content from a tablet, smartphone or MP3 player. The ASPB1, a $129 wedge-shaped component in the company’s Acoustic Research line, is due to ship late in Q1, an Audiovox spokesman said. A built-in microphone enables hands-free calling, and the system automatically mutes music when a call comes in, he said. Also in the Acoustic Research line is a portable speaker with Bluetooth that allows users to keep a smartphone in a purse or bag while playing music streamed from or stored on the device. The $99 speaker will ship in April, the spokesman said.