Cliffy B: today’s controllers have too many buttons, look like space ships

Cliff Bleszinski is at it again, speaking his mind and causing a stir with his comments. This time, the Epic Games icon took a swipe at the design of current-gen controllers, saying that they have too many buttons and that they look like “alien spaceships.” The rest of the details come after the jump.

Gears of War 2 producer and Epic Games stalwart Cliff Bleszinski is among the most outspoken devs you’ll ever come across. After causing a stir with his comments on Metal Gear Solid 4, he recently talked about the state of today’s controllers and what console manufacturers could do in the next generation.

Bleszinski went direct to the point, saying that today’s pads are too complicated with too many buttons keeping player’s fingers busy.

“This is purely me speculating in my own realm of game development, but if you look at a controller right now it looks like an alien spaceship,” he told CVG in an interview. “I think you could do things with a built-in camera or a little motion sensitivity.”

“You look at the Wii controller with less buttons – they added functionality by doing waggle,” he added. “Not a lot of games use the waggle well, but Super Mario Galaxy for example uses it perfectly.”

When asked what future consoles can have to improve their handles, Cliff let us in on what he has seen and what he thinks would be a good fit to consoles.

“I’ve seen some prototype camera stuff that some friends are working on that can actually tell the depth of the world around the player, and can track individual finger movements and stuff like that. That’s exciting stuff, and I think that’s where it all needs to start going towards,” he concluded.

CVG will let loose the rest of the interview later today. We’ll keep you posted for more interesting stuff when it hits the web.

Via CVG

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