Games developer Chris Hecker has retracted statements made last week at the Game Developer Conference when he referred to Nintendo's Wii gaming console as "a piece of s**t".  

Hecker is a developer on the forthcoming Spore that was thought up by The Sims creator Will Wright. It will be published by Electronic Arts (EA). 

"In an [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," Hecker is reported as saying in the Kotaku gaming blog. 

"In the process I hurt a bunch of people I care about. And so, I want to apologise now. When I'm on stage, I'm me. I'm talking talk from me. I'm not representing EA or Maxis."

Hecker had dismissed the Wii as "two GameCubes and some duct tape", and flamed Nintendo for failing to consider video games as an art form.

In his apology, he applauded Nintendo's innovative motion-sensing controller which allows operation of items ranging from swords to tennis rackets. He also patted the developer on the back for creating an inexpensive device.