I never in a million years thought I’d be caught dead saying this, but thank you Phil Harrison, thank you.
Why the love? Because last week at the Game Developer’s Conference the outgoing Sony video game chief said that controllers for the PS3 and the Xbox 360 were too confusing for a majority of people in the world today. “You hand somebody a game controller and it’s like you’ve handed them a live gun or a hand grenade with the pin taken out,” he said.
Then Harrison, perhaps emboldened by his recent decision to abandon ship at Sony and swim towards the sinking ship that is Atari (Infogrames), applauded the Wiimote and the Apple iPhone for their ease-of-use.
GameIndustry.biz reports that Harrison praised Nintendo’s Wiimote for being a “non-game centric device” which has democratized video game controls. He was also impressed with the iPhone for appealing to a user’s natural instincts. No, not making babies — touching things! (which, in hindsight, can also lead to making babies, but I digress…)
“I saw this first hand a few weeks ago where a two year old was playing with an iPhone and he knows how to get the pictures up of mum and dad. The two year-old then intuitively thought that all electronic devices worked like that,” said Harrison. “He’s pressing the TV to change channels. He’s right and the rest of us are wrong ”“ that should be applied universally. Apple should be applauded for that innovation.”
So, if you remember nothing else today, remember these wise words — The Wii: building one video game democracy at a time. The iPhone: makes babies.