I find it strange that it takes a hobbyist without a disability to deal with to come up with a thing like the one-handed 360 controller. The guy says he did this because he’s been asked to, I take it by people with disabilities who can’t use a regular, two-handed controller.
Sure I understand that Microsoft (or Sony, or Nintendo) doesn’t consider the disabled a major market and sure, they’d lose money on a project like this. But it’d be great PR. If they chose the project(s) well, they could help a lot of people. I’m certain a disabled-friendly development project – like re-fitting a controller and making it available through special order – would cost a fraction of a given console’s national market’s marketing budget… and given that these companies know how to market, they could leverage the project for substantial “free” publicity, anyway.
It’s beyond me how they’re still not acknowledging that 7% of their target audience (US males, according to Wikipedia) is color blind. Catering to them would cost next to nothing and increase sales. Deafness is another common disability which would be very easy to cater to, especially seeing that it would also help the non-English speaking customers (like all of Europe) or ones with less than stellar audio setup (like most of the customers). And what about all the left-handed people (8 to 15%, says Wikipedia)? Can’t we get those configurable controls already? I’m a leftie myself, and I’ve learned how to use my right hand to play games, but I know many folks who didn’t fare so well.
What about just giving us lucky gamers without any physical limitations some choice when it comes to actually playing our 60 € (that’s $79 USD) console titles? Playing games using inverted Y-axis is beyond me, but those people so inclined really should have the option to do so.
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