Nothing to do with Homer Simpson in this post, but some of the crazy comments that have been uttered by Games Industry executives over the past months have made Homer look like Captain Intelligence. The level of catfighting between companies (particularly Microsoft and Sony) has risen to ridiculous levels since E3, so here’s a round-up of some of the idiocy we’ve been treated to.

We’ll start with Microsoft’s Peter Moore, who seems to be making the biggest ass of himself lately. His most reason public comment was “Nobody is concerned anymore about backwards compatibility.” Well, maybe you’re not Peter, but what about all those gamers who have upgraded to the 360 and want to play some of their old XBox games? Admittedly a lot of people probably will only ever try and play a couple of old XBox titles at most, and most may never even try, so to a certain extent he has a point, but if they really felt that way then why bother trying to provide any support for it in the first place?

Next we go to Sony’s Phil Harrison, who when quizzed over why Sony had copied Nintendo with putting motion sensing into the PS3 pad had this to say. “When we brought the PlayStation to the market in 1994, we introduced real time 3D graphics for the first time. When Nintendo launched its N64 in 1996 it also had 3D graphics, did we say, Nintendo stole our idea!? Obviously not.“. No Phil, it’s true, Sony didn’t say that, but then that would be tantamount to saying you invented 3D graphics, which quite obviously you didn’t. This was a pretty bad example to give, so maybe it would have been better to be honest and say, “Sure we copied, but it’s a good idea so why not“.

Less well known I know, but here’s CEO of Infinium Labs, Greg Koler. “We are on a fast pace crossing over the threshold of manufacturing and marketing our first product, the Phantom Lapboard“. For those that don’t know the Phantom has so far truly lived up to it’s name by never actually making a solid appearance. In essence it’s a PC for the living room that connects via broadband and can stream all it’s gaming content down as required from the Web. It’s been in development hell for at least three years if my recollection is correct! Truly a fast pace, eh Greg?

Back to Microsoft, this time UK head Neil Thompson who had this to say when commenting on Sony forcing people into having to buy a Blu-Ray drive when they buy a PS3. “If gamers over time choose to go to HD-DVD we’re going to give them the choice to do that, but we’re not going to force them to buy that day one“. Since when did the average gamer have any say over what format their games were delivered on? Last time I checked, never. Fine, you haven’t made me buy a drive that may turn out to be useless, that much is true, but ultimately it’s going to be up to the movie studios and manufacturers of HD-DVD or Blu-Ray players as to which format will finally emerge triumphant. Sure, most consumers will vote with their wallets, so it’s likely that whichever format presents best value for money is going to win in the end, but that’s not down to us gamers, is it?

Finally, we’ll end with the king of crazy statements, Mr. Ken Kuturagi. Here’s his latest slice of wisdom. “If you consider the PlayStation 3 a toy, then yes, it is an expensive toy. However, it is more than a toy. It is a PlayStation 3. And it is the only PlayStation 3. I hope that those who understand this will gladly purchase it.“. Yes Ken. You’d better hope a lot of those that don’t understand that statement buy it as well, otherwise you won’t be selling very many…

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