Chris Hecker made headlines yesterday by calling the Wii a piece of sh*t in a GDC game developer's panel. Just one day later Hecker has retracted his statements, with Kotaku reporting his apology, which goes a little like this: "I don't know who has read the internet, yesterday. In a [unintelligible] panel I said a bunch of things. I was trying to be thought provoking and entertaining and fun and a lot of the stuff went too far over the top—on the entertaining and fun side, so that it was no longer thought provoking, just inflammatory.And in the process I hurt a bunch of people I care about. And so, I want to apologize now. When I'm on stage, I'm me. I'm talking talk from me. From me. I'm not representing EA or Maxis. I want to make two things perfectly clear. I do not think the Wii is a piece of sh*t. Nintendo needs to be applauded for trying to interface on the controller front, the user interface front, on making games accessible, on making a console that you don't need to mortgage your house to afford. Secondly, it's totally obvious—and I'm sorry that I implied otherwise—that everyone at Nintendo is passionate at making great games. Some of the games give me hope that we will be seen as an art form on par with movies and books." My take: He was really stupid for making the comments in the first place, but at least he apologized rather quickly and redeemed some of himself.

This is already being talked about in the original thread, but whatever. I honestly don't know where the apology came from...whether he really means it, or if it was a forced deal. Either way, it probably saved him a fair amount of hassle in the long run.

I didn't know you needed to apologize for not liking the Wii...Learn something new everyday, insulting the wii is obviously a terrible thing. I lost respect for him now, he didn't need to apologize for not liking the Wii. He felt it was a piece of shit and had every right to. I guess I should apologize for not liking it either..

He is not apologizing for not liking the Wii, he is apologizing for making inflammatory comments and acting like a child. It's perfectly ok not to like the Wii but back it up with more than namecalling and some tenous arguments about how Nintendo's website doesn't contain the word "art". It's true he has every right to act however he wants but it looks like he couldn't handle the backlash whether it came from Maxis or elsewhere and had to produce a pretty canned apology to try to save his reputation or maybe to keep his job.

So I guess Wii fans and Wii haters can all agree on one thing then, this guy is a fool one way or the other and about as insightful as your average forum troll.

I think that when Nintendo called up EA/Maxis to ask if this was their official policy on the Wii, there were some red faces - and Hecker's bosses had a few words to him. That is what surprised me the most about the outburst - its the sort of thing you get from amateurs working from the sidelines - people who never want to work with Nintendo (or half the games industry) again. Maybe he was just surprised how much press coverage it got - I was a little shocked to see it as the front page on gamesindustry.biz ;)

Well heaven forbid Nintendo not wanting bad press spreading around because of one man's opinion.