Miyamoto talks about WiiSpeak and Animal Crossing: City Folk

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Today, Nintendo announced voice chat functionality for Wii in the form of WiiSpeak. It’s not the conventional type of microphone, so one has to wonder why WiiSpeak works as it does. IGN interviewed Miyamoto on that question, and below is what Miyamoto had to say.

“Basically, our idea with WiiSpeak is rather than to just provide a voice-chat function, we want to really connect living rooms to each other. In that sense, the microphone in WiiSpeak is really designed to be able to clearly capture many different voices being spoken in a room at the same time and convey that over the Internet. It’s a very capable microphone and it’s designed with that intent. And so that’s why WiiSpeak has taken on the form that it has.”

WiiSpeak will be sold for $29.99, with no release date set yet. I would think that it would release on the same day as Animal Crossing: City Folk, which is the first title to make use of the WiiSpeak microphone. And speaking of the new Animal Crossing, why wasn’t WiiSpeak bundled with it? Miyamoto has the answer…

“In all honesty, it’s just in relation to cost. I’m sure there are plenty of people out there who want to play Animal Crossing over Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection. Maybe just as it is. There may be some people who want to use a USB keyboard to chat and we’re fine with that. And there may be others who want to use something like WiiSpeak. So just from a cost perspective and being able to provide the game to everybody, we thought that was the best way to go.”

[Via IGN]



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  • Surgical Precision

    Well in all due honesty I can completely understand this…

    I would likely never buy this thing unless it did actually come with a game I want…

    We only have two usb ports and one of mine will likely always be filled by my LAN Adaptor…

    Keyboard support sounds sweet though! (Though I would ditch that in a hartbeat if it ment an external hard drive!)

  • http://[email protected] swestwood

    i hope they make a update that lets you have private chats with your wiifriends like the xbox 360 and ps3 does, that would be awesome!!!

  • http://www.youtube.com/rothsothy Roth

    Wii Speak opens possibilities for third parties to come up with a headset, so let’s wait for that instead. I know NyKo is probably on the works right now.

    Nintendo just wants to connect rooms to rooms. Some people don’t like this because they’re afraid they’ll get embarrassed when their mom tells their son, “Stop playing those video games!” Then everyone on the other end will be laughing. \:D/

    // Roth

  • Charmy

    I’m glad you don’t have to buy Animal Corssing to get Wii Speak.

  • http://www.wiinintendo.net hattrick

    FYI…You could also use a USB hub if you run out of USB slots.