You may also remember that the game will feature Wii-speak, a new microphone peripheral which allows the Animal Crossing community to talk to each other in-game. At that time, Nintendo didn’t reveal much information about the device, but now we have some firm information about what it looks like and how it will work.
Wiispeak is a light-weight device that plugs directly into the USB port on the console and can be used by multiple users to chat to registered friends. Although, it has been shown online sitting on top of the TV, it can be placed anywhere in the room, providing that the cable is long enough to reach.
Animal Crossing City Folk is currently the only first-party game confirmed to use the device, though Wii’s first person shooter, The Conduit, which is due for release in early 2009, will also make use of the microphone.
One of the concerns from gamers in recent weeks was the worry that the microphone may pick up interference from static or noise from the TV. Nintendo’s Katsuya Eguchi, the Producer of the Animal Crossing: City Folk has today clarified the matter and provided a further insight into Wiispeak…
There’s some noise filtering going on. It’s designed to pick up stuff other than what’s coming out of the TV. If you put this on your TV, if this was a regular microphone, you’d get your TV sound going in. But this is a USB plug-in. So the sound coming out of your TV is going into the Wii Speak, and when it goes back into the Wii, it throws that sound away.
“We really don’t consider ourselves ‘anti-voice-chat.’
One of the things we’ve said for years now is that we’ve wanted to provide a safe environment that people didn’t feel nervous about going into. With games like Mario Kart and Smash Bros., because you can play against anybody, rivals or whoever’s out there, and they’re games where tempers can be frayed and people might use language that’s not appropriate for everyone to hear, we didn’t feel that those titles were appropriate to have a voice-chat feature. However, with Animal Crossing, you’re going to be chatting with your friends. There’s no Animal Crossing “rivals” or any sort of open gameplay like that. So we figured that as long as people have registered each other as their friends and they’re comfortable with that, then we’re fine giving them the ability to chat with each other.”
Based on Eguchi’s comments, we’d guess that means we’ll only see first-party kid-friendly games from Nintendo that utilise Wiispeak, but it will be interesting to see whether third party developers will choose more adult-orientated games for voice chat. If so, then trashtalking on Wii could become the norm. Not so kid-friendly then, eh?
Source :: Wired.com
