Mad Catz PS3 Wireless Thumbpad adds useless QWERTY keys to your SIXAXIS

Third-party gaming controllers are always a mixed bag, ranging from terrific, like the popular Logitech Cordless Action PS2 controllers, to decidedly weird, like the SplitFish EdgeFX, to head-scratchingly awful, like this Pelican / Nerf abomination. Mad Catz has never been afraid to spew out products all over the bottom half of this spectrum, and the recently-released PS3 Wireless Thumbpad is no exception. Looking for all the world like it was designed by someone who has never attempted to actually hold a SIXAXIS, the QWERTY thumbpad clips on to your controller ... at the top. While we're not sure how you're supposed to use this thing, we are almost 100% confident that no one at Mad Catz looked at a picture of the Xbox 360 QWERTY thumb keyboard before sketching this one out.

[Via PS3 Fanboy]

[Paul @ Apr 26th 2007 12:02AM]

saw it comming.

[Arno @ Apr 26th 2007 12:08AM]

As if the SIXAXIS wasn't bad enough as it was.

[tek @ Apr 26th 2007 1:13AM]

CarPC builders rejoice!
the original madcatz ps2 wired keyboard is very sought after for this purpose... when a very small keyboard is needed for basic typing and commands. Utterly useless for PS purposes though.

[ksmith @ Apr 26th 2007 11:27AM]

That's the first thing I thought of when I saw the tiny keyboard and the usb dongle.

[chris joseph @ Apr 26th 2007 4:57AM]

who cares... we wait till it's on closeout pricing and hack it to work with the PSP

[NovaLand @ Apr 26th 2007 11:30AM]

They're not retarded, they're mad cats...

[gsag @ Apr 26th 2007 1:36PM]

I love how it says console and controllers not included. Gee really?

[James @ Apr 26th 2007 2:01PM]

Do we have any reason to think that this is even IR, much less uses a standard that PSP homebrew can understand? Besides, the PDA keyboards that are currently supported usually have a little reflector arm because the IR receiver is on top of the device -- you'd have to design your own, which might not be *hard*, but would still be a pain in the butt. Besides which, what would you use it for? This board looks pretty ill-suited for game controls, and I'm not aware of any PSP homebrew where you're doing a lot of text input. I guess it would be pretty nice to have an easy way of running a chat program on your PSP (if you can find any...), but I'm not sure I'd want to lug around this thing (plus a reflector) just to do that.

[waffles @ Apr 26th 2007 8:08PM]

are they...RETARDED??!

[whiskey @ Apr 27th 2007 2:15PM]

on a umpc this would work better (if they made a sans-slideout-keyboard version)... or on an htpc (Who's up writting the linux and windows drivers?)

[Rip Torn @ Apr 30th 2007 5:41PM]

The Pelican NERF controller rocks, it's very comfortable and is a great wireless controller all around. This guy has absolutely no idea what he's talking about.

According to CNN it's one of the best game accessories on the market. http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/fun.games/04/05/game.gadgets/index.html