The EA Community event held recently at Microsoft studios was an opportunity for a few people to ask Peter Moore some questions. Gamertag Radio recorded it, and Next Generation gives up a nice summary of the most important questions and their answers.
One of the things that stood out in the Q&A session was the fact that Moore thinks the Xbox 360 controller is far to complext for entry level gamers.
“…Shoulder buttons, triggers, analog sticks, d-pads, I mean, there’s a lot going on there when you compare it to the old Atari 2600 button-and-stick, which everybody could pick up and have some fun with.”
Continuing on the same subject, he also said:
“Clearly, I think that the Wii is trying to get back to those days, although when I picked it up, I was surprised how much stuff there is on there, and it took me a while even then to get going on those things. I’m a huge fan of any kind of innovation you can try and do that will make a broader reach for games, because as an industry we’ve got to do that. We’ve got to bring more people in that are currently maybe intimidated when they look at that controller.
“I look even in my house… there’s no way that my 14-year-old daughter can really grasp [the standard controller]. She loves to play racing games, but that’s about it. And she’s frustrated because of the button configurations and the use of triggers–she just doesn’t quite get it.
“We’re doing a lot of stuff there. Nothing that we’re ready to talk about, and we’re not going to force anything that is not going to be intuitive and innovative.”
Don’t be surprised if more ways of interfacing with the Xbox 360 come out sometime during its life.