I'm done!

Wish I could have disagreed with at least one of the points you raised but I can't. 2 out of 10/that's quite generous mad cats well an truely ****ed this one up and don't appear to give a flying %uck. As you pointed out endless potential totally wasted. If anyone from madcatz ever reads these kinda posts get in touch with cyanogenmod or any of the renound teams who know what their doing and give them the contract to build the software rather than wherever cowboys currently produce ur shabby android builds cause their update supports abismal what ever u payed em its way to much

I completely agree with the OP, I purchased two Madcatz Mojos when the only other box was an Ouya. I was drooling over the potential of the Tegra 4 processor. The biggest issue with this box is its software, even though it was promised we still don’t have 4.4 and for such powerful chip it doesn’t support DTS or Dolby Digital bypass. Like most of you I got sick of waiting and have purchased an Amazon Fire TV instead, I sold one of my madcatz mojo for $160 on craigslist and used that money in addition with the money from selling my nexus 7 to purchase an nvidia shield tablet. Now that’s a company that did it right. I am going to selling my last Madcatz Mojo by the end of this month once I finish some testing with my 4k TV.

Well guys you beat me to it, I thought it was about time to join & post my feelings on the MOJO I purchased in December upon UK release but OP has written an almost identical post to what I drafted. Mad Catz could have done so much with the console which offered so much potential but lack of support has killed it before its even got started.

I feel it wouldn't be so bad if we were all kept in the loop on progress to bring us a new OS, further Play Store compatibility, gamepad mapping etc, but not a word!

I have tried to convince myself the £220 purchase was worth it, but its very hard to justify it when you look at the Shield & the Shield tablet, my Ouya is used everyday & the MOJO sits gathering dust without the power cord connected!

I beg the Mad Catz team to read these posts & at least come back to us with something, I know they do come on here so use your voice guys & throw us something.

At present I'm sure they are sat laughing that they have our money so why should they care? Well this forum ranks high on Google & must be hurting potential sales & I certainly won't buy or recommend another Mad Catz product & thats from a household which owns every major console released & has a competition PC gamer living it.

Thanks Mad Catz

I'll add my voice to the chorus, since it looks like this thread has the potential to become one of the longest ones in the Mad Catz forum.

I was new to Android but after having a great experience customizing a Nexus phone (thanks to the XDA community!) I fell for the hype and bought a M.O.J.O once root became available. Was ok with the limited number of games because Mad Catz said they were working with developers blah, blah, blah The games that work, are interesting and don't require key mapping are very few. I think I have 3 installed and don't remember the last time I played one.

It's still attached to the tv, for Netflix, but with a different input device. For those of you outside the US, after installing Set DNS and using some of its default settings I can access US Netflix so that's a plus. It's good for roms too.

This device had so much potential but the company looks like it doesn't have a clue. What's worse is that they flat out lied to customers about the Kit Kat update. From day one they said that "they were working on it, it was coming soon. it was with Google waiting for approval, etc. etc." and those were all total lies. I can't give any more of my money to a company that treats its customers like that. The sad part is that they could have easily found someone to outsource the Kit Kat work to right here on XDA, but even their employees joined this community after the product was launched.

I encourage others to add their thoughts to this thread.

joaommsousa said:

The reason they don't answer this kind of posts, and the reason you don't get any feedback on the work being done by Madcatz on MOJO, it's because you wont like those answers. The few units sold probably just made them stop working on this.

Again, as a developer, i think i'de get fired if i delivered such a final product or software. Just amateur.

Anyone thinking about buying this, just dont, anyone who already bought it just say Thank's madcatz and cry a tear for their hard work.

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

You beat me to it again OP, however I would like to hear from MC themselves & have just invited Alex Verrey from MadCatz to join this thread with the following:

Dear Mr. Verry,

I do hope I find you in good health & apologise for this unconventional communication regarding a MadCatz product.

I am a supporter of MadCatz products & purchased the M.O.J.O in late 2013, a product which you handled the P.R for to great effect.

However myself & others have become disillusioned with Madcatz by the serious omissions in support & features this product needs & as such would like to invite yourself or any other MadCatz employee to join the recent topic on the XDA Developers Forum:

http://xdaforums.com/mad-catz-mojo/general/im-t2852370

I think if you find the time to read through the aforementioned thread I need say little more & thank you in advance for any assistance you may offer to myself & the M.O.J.O community.

I agree the software support side of the mojo is disappointing, that's not to say it's not there at all.
It's hasn't even been a month since the last update! ie 4K TV, better google play & BT support.
Yes, it's two steps forward, one step back (now root doesn't fix google play), but Madcatz is a hardware company and still new to android and SW.. so I guess its to be expected... hmm.. but a year on and it's still the same :/

And going by the reactions here, to their detriment.. SW does need more support then HW and a OS needs a bit more..
The kernel code suggests that they don't have a dedicated Android person internally, which I think is a really huge mistake!
Android can be a great computer appliance when finished 100% and never changed, in MOJO's case, knowing it wasn't going to be finished 100% from the start, more attention should have been made.
One extra internal salary/contract and all this could have been avoided and our forums would have been like the shield's.. definitely underestimated Android! and in hindsight maybe a learning opportunity for them?

Yip, It's frustrating, to still have the dongle on USB3, not to mention no kitkat.
But, the mojo is still one the better android TV box HW wise out there and still relevant... I'm optimistic kitkat will come, hopefully sooner then later.

I think the potential is still there and it's the center piece of their gamesmart range which is still increasing, the StrikeM only released last week.
So they're not going to abandon it and I think there's still more support/improvements coming for it!

I'm guessing it's a balancing act with limited resources and growing the company in a competitive industry, so we'll see where it goes :/

I don't expect a reply here from Alex, @Mad Catz Rich etc, but I know they do read this.

I have received a reply from Alex Verrey & although it does not address our needs as such I am most appreciative of having got a response & now await for other Mad Catz employees to jump on here, the email reads as follows:

Thanks for the email. No need to apologise for reaching out, it’s good to hear from you, and if any forum members are feeling let down by Mad Catz, we certainly want to hear about it.

We have several Mad Catz staff members who already actively participate on the forums. All of these guys are probably better positioned than I to provide the answers you are looking for. I know M.O.J.O. well, but the guys in question are the lead product managers and marketers of M.O.J.O. and will be able to go into great detail for you and any others looking for assistance.

Apologies if I sound patronising, but were you aware that we have recently launched a new and free Firmware update for M.O.J.O.? The new update introduces nearly full Google Play accessibility without the need to root. In addition, the update introduces 4K (UHD) output compatibility and brings the entire catalogue of OUYA games to M.O.J.O. We have also been working with our friends at OnLive to introduce perfect compatibility with their cloud based gaming network.

We continue to work with developers and publishers to ensure full compatibility for major titles as well. Sadly, it is true that not every Android title available today is fully compatible with M.O.J.O. and our C.T.R.L.R but we’re sure working on it!

I’ll leave it to the other guys to jump on the thread and assist where possible. In the meantime, thanks for reaching out, we sincerely do care to hear your feedback and will strive to communicate more regularly in the future.

Regards

ALEX VERREY

I might be being really dumb, but is this referring to the MO0205-TS Firmware. Because for me this update did increase the controller support granted, however I don't really care to much about that a ps3 and Xbox controller has worked fine for me since 2009 and the Wii classic controller before that on android devices. The ctrlr controller support is a bonus but could live with out at this point as the OS needs to be much higher on the priority's list.
It did the total opposite of increasing compatibility to my google play account, I had quite a large selection of games and apps before, but after updating basically all the games and apps I played/used where no longer compatible. And even on apps I don't use or want, when looking through the play store I never used to see incompatible that much now, now its plastered all over it.

My main main issues are :
1: It freezes and crashes a lot, which creates other issues.

2: one of these my micro SD must have been formatted at least 30 times now and I can't be arsed using it n e more board of transferring data to it. (A 32 or 64gb mmc this can be time consuming) seems to occurs when the mojo crashes or is unplugged from the wall on my mojo.

3: Has not happened any where near as much maybe only a hand full of times but I've had multiple hard drives wiped (luckily i have back ups of everything,) and again when were talking close to full 1tb drives its frustrating and time consuming to transfer the data back.

4: seems a kick in the balls that their are the nvidia only games such as half life and portal. Which are not available on the mojo which ticks all the boxes for compatibility.

5: NO RECOVERY MENU ACCESS: seriously we can't back up our systems In case something goes drasiticly wrong, which with android is a serious possibility.

6: The mojo went to market mid December 2013 and I could be wrong has had only 3 maybe 4 updates which have only addressed minor issues. And don't say itl shortly receive a kitkat 4.4 update before you release to market then 9 MONTHS later still not out, doesn't fill me with confidence at all.
I Don't get why dev teams like cyanogen, kindroid, crash, omni, jackyaway and countless other on XDA I am not going to list are able to produce nightly updates for multiple android builds across multiple devices and tablets, including multiple custom tweeks and optimisations.
I assume you have employed a professional development team. The teams I listed above will have provided its users with more updates in 3/5 days than your professional team has provided us in 9 months of suffering through a devise which by no way feels like the competed article that's the gripe and what's grinding your current owners patience out.

7: Compatibility issues talked about above

8: Because of the issues with the SD card and HDD formatting its impossible to fit all the games u wish to use on the console. With some games and apps now in the couple of gig region even if full compatibility is unlocked i could not set up the console exactly how I would like with a lot missing.

Alot of the issues listed above should have been addressed along time ago

Hello All,
M.O.J.O. is a new and innovative product but for the most part the issues aren’t related to the hardware. C.T.R.L.R support in Android apps is new and it’s taken some time for developers to update their manifests to get device support for M.O.J.O. Anybody that’s using M.O.J.O. and doing regular firmware updates will attest that, while it’s not perfect, the universe of apps and games available today is pretty cool and getting better all the time. Of course, there are many other micro-consoles that are now available and may be simpler to use, but we’re not aware of one that has the depth of assortment and quality of games and apps that M.O.J.O. has today and we’re committed to continuing to expand the selection and improve the experience.

The evolving nature of the Android app universe means that compatibility has been a moving target but we are fully committed to universal app compatibility and developers want their apps on as many supporting devices as possible. We are continuously working with developers to implement Google’s directive to support game controllers in games (http://developer.android.com/training/game-controllers/controller-input.html ). Please let us know when you come across an app that has a problem and we'll get in touch with the developer. Please feel free to contact the developer directly as well.

The "not compatible" message is a result of the hardware support filtering in the Google Play Store and can be impacted by options selected by the developer when posting the app manifest to the store. Typically, it’s not because M.O.J.O. can’t run the app. For example, we recently had an issue with one game that was rendered incompatible for a few days due to an update that had removed M.O.J.O. from their “white list” of supported devices by mistake. Fortunately, that was a quick and easy fix. The latest firmware update for M.O.J.O. gets access to a lot more content than previous unrooted releases, although we still find some apps with options selected in their manifest that prevent them from being accessible even though it would play fine on M.O.J.O. otherwise. Again, as with controller support, let us and the developer know and we’ll chase it up for you. Positively, there’s little doubt that the vast majority of popular apps and games are now available.

In addition, we have a lot of content for gamers not widely supported on other devices. OUYA is now available on M.O.J.O. giving access to hundreds of games configured specifically for compatibility with our C.T.R.L.R. More and more games are being added as OUYA works through their library of now over 900 games. We've also partnered with OnLive and their game-streaming service giving access to their PlayPack library and CloudLift-enabled titles from your Steam account with over 250 PC games from triple-A publishers playable on M.O.J.O. and with our C.T.R.L.R. These apps are not supported on many other devices today.

For resolution settings, we offer 720p, 1080p, and 4K support, as mandated by Google for GMS-certified TV devices.

DTS pass-through is unfortunately not supported but M.O.J.O. has full support for Dolby Digital pass-through. Some of the issues people are facing are app issues. For example, pass-through functionality is broken in the Android version of XBMC but other media players such as MX Player support it just fine.

Mad Catz Nate said:

Hello All,

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

Hey Nate, there running theme of the thread seems to be Android.. in particular kitkat and lack of a dev community for modding.
Personally, I'm not pushing for kitkat it will come when it comes... but any chance you can get someone that knows android to answer @shabbypenguin questions , repack problem? and ADB over USB/ETH0.

Running out of ideas and steam... help would be greatly appreciated.


From http://madcatz.com/mojo/en-ca/

Ready to Root

As any Android power-user knows, the best way to get the most out of your device is to root it. Root access opens up all sorts of options including adding custom keymapping capabilities and installing custom ROMs. Mad Catz provides a short step-by-step guide to rooting, and our tech support team is ready to help.
The best part – rooting won’t void your warranty.

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

gwaldo said:

Running out of ideas and steam... help would be greatly appreciated.

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

It would take 2 minutes to post a little update, even something like: "Sorry, I don't have that answer and the guy that does is out on holiday or on the road, blah, blah, blah" and you (we) don't get even that. I suppose that's an answer right there.

You're responsible for probably 25% of the user generated M.O.J.O. content that's on the Internet, and this is how they value your questions. :crying: Me, I'm just a customer.

P901 said:

It would take 2 minutes to post a little update, even something like: "Sorry, I don't have that answer and the guy that does is out on holiday or on the road, blah, blah, blah" and you (we) don't get even that. I suppose that's an answer right there.

You're responsible for probably 25% of the user generated M.O.J.O. content that's on the Internet, and this is how they value your questions. :crying: Me, I'm just a customer.

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

I wouldn't say i'm 25%, i have a blog and a few videos...
Maybe the questions have to go through management's approval then to china and back... I don't know
Anyway, I got a few more ideas while waiting.

gwaldo said:

I wouldn't say i'm 25%, i have a blog and a few videos...
Maybe the questions have to go through management's approval then to china and back... I don't know
Anyway, I got a few more ideas while waiting.

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

Gwaldo, I think you are the kindest guy on the internet, or at least in the top 10 :fingers-crossed:

p.s. have a look, your content accounts for about 30% of what is out there!

gwaldo said:

Maybe the questions have to go through management's approval then to china and back...

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

They must have a lot of layers of management to go through...

joaommsousa said:

I have MOJO for several months now, when i initially bought it, i showed it to all my friends, and bragged about the potential of this product.

After all this months, its just sad, the lack of support or competence of the manufacters to actually stand by their product.
Beeing a developer and an android enthusiast, it's just sad to see how poorly this hole process has been developed.

The console itself has several issues, the play store, for me is a huge deal breaker. You can't have a main selling point of the product (the full access to play store and tegra zone) when most of the products there, altought i can see them, are not compatible either with the console itself, or worse, the gamepad isn't recognized. Titles like Portal 2 and Half Life 2, made precisely for MOJO's hardware, and i cant play it.
You can't also ask regular users to Root their device after every update. Either support the non rooted version, or it has to be rooted by default.
I could be a regular user who just wants to play some vice city on my TV, don't know or care how to root. This isn't a developer edition!!

The OS itself has several issues, from the basic ones ( I CANT RESTART OR SHUTDOWN THE CONSOLE w/ unplugging it), no resolution settings. I have several audio lag issues when the console is left on for days. So even for media, i can't have XBMC running 100% there.I do have a Samsung Beam (very slow 1.0 dual core) with buggy OS and i have hours and hours of projecting XBMC media without ANY issues.

The support is next to nothing. I've installed the latest update from MadCatz, i was so happy with more google play support etc.. Turns out when i didn't want to create a OUYA account, now i have OUYA Framework crashing every 5 minutes. Just perfect.


The other main selling point was the gamepad, a solid, well construct Controller, with amazing gaming tecnology from madcatz.
Well, beside the construction, there's nothing else good about the gamepad. I have a bunch of tablets and phones, i have a really hard time connecting and staying connected with my Android 4.4.2 devices. I'm constantly losing my Connection with the gamepad, and the REconnection is just painfull, i have to restart the gameopad a few times before i can get it to work again.
Also most of the games with gamepad support doesn't recognize the CTRLR.. WTF, MadCatz team, even the simple part of getting in touch with game developers, didn't do their homework.
Mad Catz could however, try to compensate somehow, and make a decent Gamepad Mapper. Nothing on this been release, has been months.

If this was a review of the product i would give it 2/10. And the 2 is for the choice of using Nvidia's tegra 4, and thats the only good thing about this.
The lack of support of XDA's developers, given the potential of the device shown by nvidia's shield portable, is insane.

I no longer brag about this with my friends, i'm just ashamed and deceived to have spent 250 bucks on this. I'm buying Nvidia's shield tablet and try to forget Madcatz and my 250$

Thanks MadCatz.

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

I have Mojo for some months now and I'm very pleased with it.

Half-Life 2 and Portal works great on my device with some adjustments.

Yes, you can power the device off with a keyboard with shutdown button or install a widget that maps the powerbutton
and brings up the power menu. This is a proper shutdown, not like pulling the plug!

I honestly think right now the nexus player is a better deal. 10 gameloft games are being optimized for the system. Mad Catz must seriously hate their system because they don't update the product. Plus it's still $199 and the amount of problems you're having, makes no sense.

disorder78 said:

I honestly think right now the nexus player is a better deal. 10 gameloft games are being optimized for the system. Mad Catz must seriously hate their system because they don't update the product. Plus it's still $199 and the amount of problems you're having, makes no sense.

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

Anyone who bought this crap and wants the real stuff ou is crazy enought to be considering buying it, i seriously recommend Nvidia's Shield Tablet. More expensive than nexus player, but gets the job well done on every end ( Entertainment, gaming, PC gaming, Console / Tablet mode )
Nvidia actually supports their products, just announced Lollipop for the tablet by the end of november.

kaiserclaw said:

I have Mojo for some months now and I'm very pleased with it.

Half-Life 2 and Portal works great on my device with some adjustments.

Yes, you can power the device off with a keyboard with shutdown button or install a widget that maps the powerbutton
and brings up the power menu. This is a proper shutdown, not like pulling the plug!

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

Half-Life 2 and Portal wow!
Does it play well with the CTRLR?
I would buy both for my mojo if I knew how to get it working... could you please give us a clue how you got it work?