We discussed gaming console controllers and how they are being ignored by game scholars and often overlooked. This puzzles me. Obviously it is difficult to pinpoint in gameplay what controllers do, but I think it is important to talk about.
I worked for Microsoft until last year where I represented them in electronic stores and demonstrated their products and guided and I remember how controllers meant the world for the choice of console. It really was an important part of their play experience and it was, for many, what made them buy a particular console. Because let us face it - Sony Playstation and Microsoft Xbox are not that different - they are game consoles, playing games, like dvd-players play movies. Now, as it is with dvd-players and game consoles, the screen is important, the chair you sit on is important, who is with you is important and - how do you know - something very important is physically present as well when it comes to games: The controller!
As far as I got to know in my everyday life as a Microsoft employee, there was no such thing as a "purely intuitive" (something everyone, being human beings, from the day we are born, can use as if it is the most natural thing) - no, the intuitive element lay in what the gamers were used to. What they had learned. I experienced how Playstation users considered the Xbox controllers to be clunky and they did not like, that they from one position could not reach all buttons. Xbox players, on the other hand, found Playstation controllers fragile and "puny" and they did not like the "standard position" as it is more "horizontal" (like a hand weapon) than the Xbox controllers (that I would more say resembles a car steering wheel).
(picture from: Brian Recktenwald)
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