Lately I've been reading about Velvet Assassin and its failure to impress with its aiming, etc., and it occurs to me that this sort of problem occurs for a variety of reasons, some of them perhaps not as clear to me as others.  In this particular case, I've heard mentioned that it's a smaller developer with a poor track record, which implies that perhaps this company simply doesn't have the talent to pull off a good interface/control-scheme.

But then we have other examples, such as Too Human, which was created by a "solid" developer who should have been able to make the interface really shine.  Perhaps in that case it was a rushed development schedule... no, that title was in development for a long time.  Attempt to blaze a new interface trail that most users just couldn't grasp?  Possibly, and I've heard many people who bought the game claim that the player "just had to get used to the novel controls".

A third example is Warhawk (feel free to throw in any Wii/PS3 motion-control titles that fail from a control perspective).  This was an early PS3 title and the pressure may have been on to "show off use of the 6-axis".  The question here is, could the 6-axis controls on this game have been better, or was the idea of trying to fly something by moving that particular controller flawed at a fundamental level?  What I've heard from users is that the controls for this game work, but not very well.

Having developed a broad range of software over 30 years, I have to wonder what transpires at some of these companies when this sort of issue occurs.  Does Quality-Control/Testing keep pushing back on development until management finally says they're out of time and they just need to ship or go bust?  Do the testers get so good at the "novel" controls that they become blind to the learning curve that will be required of a typical user?  Does management at the company believe that shovelware will sell no matter how badly the interface is implemented?  Do schisms arise within the company, to the point where one part of the staff believes the controls are great while another part believes the controls are dead in the water?

I'm curious to know if anyone has any first or second-hand knowledge regarding this issue.

EDIT: I meant Lair, not Warhawk, above.  Sorry.

The controls in warhawk are amazingly good, you just need to get through the learning curve, Lair was really good despite reviewers claims it was utter crap, im guessing they didnt take the time to get used to motion controls.

Sounds like the learning-curve issue in those games.  I wonder if a developer can add more tutorial content to help in this area.  I know that I don't feel as pressured to perform in the tutorial sections as I do once the actual story of the game commences.

A lot of it would be rushed development. I know Lair suffered from this. A lot would be poor testing methodology, though TBH a lot of average developers suffer from this. But unfortunately the issues involved are kind of too complex for an outsider to really explain.

Would that be for an outsider to explain, or to understand?

Well, noone truely knows what causes a game to go bad until they've been there. Well thats the impressions I get from developers.

Oh but they did add tutorial modes to these games

I forgot to mention a counter example of poor control/interface design... Halo Wars. This is a situation where it was believed to be impossible to implement an RTS very well using a game controller instead of mouse and keyboard. Having played the entire campaign through, I can say first-hand that the interface is pure genius. It works better than I every could have imagined, and it feels very "natural" to use, i.e. - very little learning curve at all.

So how does a company take something as challenging as that and make it smell like a rose, when other companies try and implement interfaces that have already been done well before, yet they fail? I would think that having good boilerplate examples would be enough, but I've developed very few games.

So, are the people who complain about the interface not willing to do the tutorials?

Also, I meant Lair, but said Warhawk in my OP.  Thanks for clearing that up.