When I first opened mine the plastic film over the picture overlay on the CP had already come off a little bit. my stick is fine though. put sanwa buttons in it. need to order a new stick.
That’s crazy because they’re up for pre-order in Holland.
Well I just got an email saying:
"I am delighted to let you know that your Preorder for Xbox 360 Street Fighter IV Tournament Fightstick is now being processed subject to successful payment being taken from your credit card when it is dispatched. The order will be dispatched by your chosen delivery method in time to reach you for the day of release.
By using the GAME 1st To Play Preorder Service you have ensured that you will be among the first people to receive Xbox 360 Street Fighter IV Tournament Fightstick, and we are confident that you will be happy with the order, our service and our speedy delivery! "
I don’t think it’s delayed. Just very limited, which is why I had pre-ordered with 3 different places.
Fuck this shit. Apparently madcatz pulled gamecrazy’s sticks back a few weeks. And by a few weeks I mean over a fuckin month. I had hope for this shit, But its all dead. Gonna get my 150$+ back 
Now, Can anyone point me in the direction of a lagless ps3/usb adapter?
I had a pre-order with Barnes & Noble, and had paid an additional $10 for over-night… now here we are game day and I get this email:
This email is to inform you that one or more products listed below from your order has been delayed from shipping. At this time, we do not have a ship date, but your backordered product(s) should be available again within the next 14 days.
Sonsabitches… fortunately for me one of my neighbors had a hookup and got me a stick this morning! I’m so psyched. As soon as I got it home I flicked the stick around a bit and wasn’t sure if I could feel anything suspicious. I decided to take it apart and have a look-see. I’m glad I did, because that washer was sliding around.
PS3 SE Stick… $70
Krazy Glue… $5
Mad Catz fucking me for the last time… priceless.
Here’s a thread with some good details on how to do the fix for those inclined. http://forums.shoryuken.com/showthread.php?t=176370
Just got off of the phone with the folks at MadCatz and while the rep was quite nice, still let me know that it’s going to be a 2-3 week turnaround and I’d have to pay one-way shipping.
I’ll be taking my two units back to Gamestop to get a refund and wait for the next batch to come through. There’s no reason for me to eat through my 90 day warranty at this point. What it seems like to me is that there was an attention to detail early in the process but as they got closer to go-time there had to have been a mad rush and less than optimal parts were used as the deadline and the order fast approached.
It sucks, but I don’t blame Markman or S.Kill for any of these issues. What they laid out and created was, indeed, a custom stick. It’s when these sticks went to mass production and other hands became involved in the process did something go wrong. I still plan on picking up two FightSticks-- but I’ll be waiting for the next batch.
Mad Catz-- come on. I think a great number of us knew better, but we did hope.
Does the stick have a 90 days warranty or is it 5 years in North America and 2 years elsewhere ?
I was lucky enough to score one of these sticks today since both of my TE orders got cancelled. I have a detailed email from a small retailer that explains the nature of the distribution problem but I don’t feel it will serve any real purpose to post it.
Anyway, I knew what I was getting into when I got it so I wasn’t surprised at all.
The good: For $70 this is an excellently designed stick. For those looking to mod, grab any you can find. The fit and finish was fine, no scratches or any cosmetic defects. I took the opportunity to slap on a octagonal gate and a bat top while I was in there. The stick feels great now; smooth as butter.
The bad: Had the washer issue that plagues a good portion of these sticks. I would recommend anybody who is looking to buy one of these plan on checking it. Otherwise, I can almost guarantee it’s going to fail eventually (most likely within the warranty period)
If you can change a tire, you should be able to fix the stick. Once it’s fixed, it’ll be the best $70 you’ve spent in a while. All these horror stories and videos about stripping the screws out I’m convinced is purely incomptence. As long as you use a proper size screwdriver bit, they come right out. The biggest challenge is removing the square gate which just takes a little patience and a couple small screwdrivers.
This is NOT Markman’s fault. He did his part with an excellent design but the production got screwed up. It sounds as if Madcatz is taking responsibility for this as they should.
So what is the purpose of that washer in the first place? Sounds like the stick will work fine without it.
Are they ? I thought their only comment as of now was :
I think they’re hilarious… and I’m FULL Chinese!
I’m interested in learning of the distribution issues. Can you post somewhere or summarize it?
On a note about the screws being stripped. While we can’t rule out incompetence on some levels, there are reports of the red glue stuff leaking into the screw area which bonded the screws to that board. Hence, making it incredibly hard to unscrew.
I’m Chinese, and I don’t share the same sentiment.
It’s better to do without racist remarks, just to be safe.
i noticed that the washer on my jlf moves around too, but it stays put once the pcb is in place. mad catz might have just done a shitty job with the pcb not fitting exactly above the washer…maybe
As far as details on the distribution “problem” it was basically a business decision to only have a small initial production run. It required a large cash outlay to “go big” and they lacked the capital. They were probably worried that they might have tons of sticks in this economy with no buyers. They severely under estimated the market. That scenerio is understandable as this is purely business from their end.
What I heard that is questionable on Madcatz part is that they told their distributers that they would be able to fulfill the enormous amount of pre-orders when they knew they couldn’t. This left the retailers “hanging” so to speak. The number I was quoted as allocation to a massive distributer was a total of “400”. That’s pretty damn small.
It’s sad though because the demand for these things could have been a huge boost to Madcatz bottom line had they anticipated the demand. As the SF4 hype dwindles, so will demand is my guess so they missed a huge opportunity.
In reference to the stick itself:
All the screws looked as if the red stuff was intentionally put there. In fact, it looks like locktite to keep the screws from backing out or something. In any case, I find it hard to believe based on my experience that there wasn’t some incompetence involved.
a problem i had when modding my stick is that the top right screw for the joystick mounting plate does not tighten. it goes down but it just continues to rotate. since the other 3 are tighten in place, im not too worried about the joystick moving around, it seems pretty in place. the hole must have been stripped or something?
You could try and find a slightly bigger screw from Home depot or something. Or you could try the toothpick trick that I use sometimes. Try shoving a toothpick in the hole and then thead the screw. Might tighten right up.
Thanks for the info.
You’re right about them potentially missing the mark. I, like many of those who wanted a TE stick to begin with, saw that I wasn’t going to get one for SF4 launch. Hell if I were to play SF4 on the damn 360 pad. So I needed an alternative because we want to play this game with a good stick.
Hence, I already went and bought some HRAP EX and HRAP3s. So when the new shipment of TE’s go through, I’ll be content with the HRAPs. And quite a few people here have opted to go HRAP with Sanwa parts to make up for it as well.
So yeah, good point.
Registered here to say thanks to everyone in this thread. Had my SE FightStick for all of an hour before it stopped registering any down movements from the stick. Had no idea what it could have been until stopping by here.
Called Mad Catz, but customer service was unhelpful to say the least. The first recommendation from the tech was, “You know, you could fix it yourself maybe if you know what you’re doing.” I reminded him that it would void the warranty to do that and that it would be great for the product to work longer than an hour and he said, “Well you can fix it yourself or wait for us to do it–you want to think about it?” Hello? I’ve never bought anything from Mad Catz before, so I’m going to assume this is atypical and that their standard first response isn’t “you can try to fix it yourself.”
Anyway, stick has gone back to Gamestop. Shame. I really liked it for that hour. Glad not everyone’s is messed up.
Guys I just wanted to update everyone that there will be an official announcement regarding anyone having issues with the standard edition FightSticks soon. We’re not ignoring anyone.
I haven’t been following the thread today, but I hope everyone is doing well. Street Fighter IV is here… so I hope everyone has a good time with the game.