Not harder, per se, just different. Much of the psychomotor coordination used to land an airplane is learned by flying the actual plane--knowing the "feel" of the jet. In your friend's defense, it sounds like the control difference between the real plane and the simulation was too much for the skill to transfer immediately.

Another issue is that simulators do not duplicate the somatosensory and vestibular system perceptions a pilot feels when flying. These systems feed a great deal of information to a pilot's brain, not as much as the visual system, but enough that transitioning to an environment where there is no "seat-of-the-pants" feel takes a moment to get used to.