There are only two things I dislike about the boomerang:

1) The handles are too long.

2) The controller is too wide.  It looks like it would be more difficult to reach the analog sticks with your thumbs, because your hands would be naturally farther apart holding onto those grips.

If they had come out with a less exaggerated design, with shorter handles and a bit more of a tight curve instead of a gradual sweeping curve, it could have been a vast improvement over the DualShock.  Instead, Sony came out with this design, and mistook people's negative reactions as "we don't want you to change the controller ever" instead of "OK, nice try, but this has some problems, maybe something a bit less crazy looking."

what were they thinking lol, i remember thinking that would be really uncomfortable to use

I thought it was great. Well, ok, it looked a little silly. The analog sticks kind of resemble giant droopy nipples. But it looked great to hold. Look a little closer -- the spacing between the buttons and the analog sticks is almost exactly the same as on the DualShock. I've never seen a side shot of it, so I don't really know what the shoulder buttons are like... it looks to me though like they were placed far enough toward the center that your fingers would curve smoothly around the contour of the controller rather than perch claw-like on the buttons like they do now. And the big handles were perfect. Anybody ever use a Microsoft Sidewinder controller? It had a very similar design. Most comfortable controller I've ever held.

You guys say the boomerang looked awkward to hold... I think it was designed explicitly around ergonomics. It would have been a great controller, and maybe more people would have accepted it if they'd had a chance to hold it. And you know, the black version wasn't even that silly looking.

Edit: aha! Somebody even made a handy animated image explaining why it was so comfortable.

It's a bloody shame it was never released. 

I always thought that boomerang controller looked terrible, haha.

Sony should have made something more like this

http://www.axess.com/twilight/console/detail/saturn_b.html

Oh yeah, just toss an extra analog stick somewhere on there, haha

I thought they will change the PS3 design too, I don't like it. I really believe it was a joke when I saw both of them, the console and the controller... I read comments all over the internet of people complaining about it. Then they changed it... and acted like that control never existed...

^ LOL.

that was one of the worst controllers made and no surprisngly, it was made for one of the worst systems evar made.

I'd have taken the boomerang controller any day over the uncomfortable and outdated sixaxis (easily my least favorite controller for 7th gen)

 

image that controller 

^Haha, that's pretty funny.

CaptainPrefrences said: ^ LOL. that was one of the worst controllers made and no surprisngly, it was made for one of the worst systems evar made.

Well the Saturn didn't do that great in the anywhere outside of Japan, but it had some great games on it. I still love the Saturn and would play mine if it still worked.(originally bought it in '96 I think) I need to buy another one, hehe.

The analog Saturn controller actually wasn't too bad, I was surprised at how comfortable it was although I only ever used it for Nights, so... I'm pretty sure that was the inspiration for the Dreamcast controller (at least it looks vaguely similar)