Wednesday, March 07, 2007

GDC 2007: Wii comments ...

Um ...

So, Chris Hecker over at Maxis and working on Spore, probably one of the most anticpiated god games (and games period) lashed out at Nintendo, saying, "The Wii is a Piece of Sh*t!"

So, everyone's entitled to their opinions, but since publisher (and Maxis owner) Electronic Arts is prepping a version of Spore for the Nintendo DS, maybe these comments could have been more artfully couched?

Since these comments were made in a talk enabled "Burning Mad - Game Publishers Rant", I wonder if any publishers wanted to add, "Better understanding from all levels of development the advance and royalty structure."

As a guy who manages develoment teams, and service programs that span the branding, distribution, and multiple internal and external parties, I'm sensitive to the balancing act between giving space to gripe, and the importance of being on the same page.

"One team, one brand" (or something similar).

I'm just saying ...

UPDATED: Evidently, Hecker gave a public apology for his comments. From IGN.com:
Hecker also noted that when he is giving a speech (or rant) he is speaking for
himself, and not for Maxis or EA, which owns Maxis. EA has been throwing a lot
of support behind the Wii, so it may have put the company in a strange spot when
one of its employees publicly denounced Nintendo's new console.
To get caught up, check out the updating GDC summaries below (and if you know of more / better ones, let me know):

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