Wii U Will Have Very Selective Voice Chat

In the lead up to the Wii U’s release next month, I never even thought of this issue—I just assumed that Nintendo’s new system would allow for voice chat in much the same way that the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 would. Not so, according to a post on Joystiq from last night.

As it turns out, the Wii U GamePad’s built-in microphone will not support in-game chat. Only a few games will offer that feature—so far only Assassin’s Creed III, Mass Effect 3, and Call of Duty: Black Ops 2—and that’s only achievable through plugging a third-party licensed headset, such as the wide variety of Turtle Beach headsets detailed in this other Joystiq post from last month.

The post also points out that the pro controller, which will probably be the preferred control-choice for those playing first-person shooters or other games where the GamePad isn’t quite so integral, doesn’t have a microphone jack, meaning that the GamePad will have to sit next to them in order to get that done. At that rate, you might as well just call your buddies on your phone and talk with a headset that way. In fact, that’s what I used to do back on the Wii. So, that’s annoying.

When this story was forwarded to the IGD editors and writers last night, some of us said that Nintendo was “out of touch,” while others said that the lack of voice chat didn’t really hurt the Wii’s sales much. What do you think?

This isn’t much of a deal breaker for me, but I won’t lie and say I’m not irritated by yet another seemingly boneheaded omission. To me, the GamePad looks cool as hell, and I’m excited about the different play possibilities. But the networking and online play stuff is still totally ass backwards. There’s going to be moderators vetting everyone’s Wii U communications and messages, and now we can’t even just talk to each other. C’mon, Nintendo. I mean, what’s the worst that could happen if you’d just let us friggin’ talk to each other?

Oh, right.

Via Joystiq and Joystiq again