Is Nintendo Right to Exclude Voice Chat?

CantGetAWii

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Dec 22, 2006
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Yes, you are reading the title right. Nintendo has confirmed that while in online races on Mario Kart Wii, you will be unable to talk to your friends and opponents via text or voice. This will surely come as a blow to Nintendo fans, who wanted to play with their friends online in what the Xbox 360 does automatically and PS3 doing now. Many have criticized Nintendo for their lack of online options to socialize among friends while online, and this surely isn’t going to help that image.

It’s not all doom and gloom though, as Nintendo Europe did have this to say: "You can create rooms for friends to join and even text chat while you’re waiting for other racers." You may be thinking “Well that’s not that bad,” but like with everything, there is a catch. According to a rep for Nintendo America, gamers will only be able to select from a pre-determined number of phrases. This is going to make it even harder to have a proper conversation with your friends.

Ok, we now know this information, but let’s flip the coin and ask “Do we need voice chat in racing?” Let’s look at such games as PGR 4 and Forza 2. In both games, you are able to speak in the lobby and chat while racing though; however, if you’re taking the game seriously, I suppose you might not want to lose concentration and start talking to people while you’re trying to race. Then you could get the odd online idiots that want to spoil it for everybody and use crude, racist words against people that spoil your online experience. With this being Mario Kart Wii, we can presume that there be young kids playing and for them to be hearing this language at their age would be wrong. You can say Nintendo is putting parents concerns at ease with this move. Unlike the Xbox 360 and PS3 at the moment, the Wii is generally aimed at younger people so online safety is a bigger issue.

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The article makes sense, yet there is a big deal of irony in this. It is true that there will be alot of young kids on Mario Kart. But most of the people who use racist remarks or talk trash to the point that its past the point of funny or competitive to rude and insulting are? Yes thats right... Kids... Depending on what age a kid is to you, for me they are around the ages of 11-16. They are the biggets population of people who are the most annoying on online chat. Ive also heard even younger kids around 8 years old talking smack and yelling the N word.

But, still Nintendo could do some kind of system where younger kids cannot talk nor can they hear chat or simply give it some kind of parental controls that can be monitored.
 
yeah i really agree with T3kNi9e, they can figure out a way to limit what small kids can do with the headet and whatnot
 
Dbomb3 said:
yeah i really agree with T3kNi9e, they can figure out a way to limit what small kids can do with the headet and whatnot
abstinence is the only form of protection that is 100% effective :yesnod:
 
I think that people should just play the game and not get mad at nintendo for not putting in a voice chat. Sure it's fun to trash talk and whatnot but its not really something you need to play and have fun. people should stop getting mad at nintendo for not putting voice chat. it'll com. just be patient. I'm guessing that by the time the next mario kart comes out after this new one will most likely have voice chat along with many other good games. Right now nintendo is just trying to make some good games that people can enjoy so people keep buying. Think about it. They dont put voice chat on this mario kart but everyone is still going to buy it, and later on in the future when they finally come out with voice chat many other people will buy games also.
 
Yeah sreiously, everyone is making Waaaaaay too big a deal about this voice-chat thing.
It has NEVER been a part of what makes gaming fun for me, therefore I won't miss it, and it's really just not that big a deal!
Would it REALLY make it that much more fun for you to have people blabbing in your ear the whole time you're trying to race, or do whatever else? No!
It wouldn't. I can't believe how worked up people get over this unimportant stuff. The bigger isses are Nintendo delaying games purposefully to maximize their profits $$$. That $#!T really pisses me off.
 
if its that big a deal of not letting kids hear cuss-words, why not put an update in parental controls sayinghe cant hear talk and mute voice chat for him? if parents are that controlling then let them block it for the kids. but, as far as i know, most kids, whether at school or through parents, already know that stuff
 
Doesn't every Wi-fi game say that game experience may change during online play? Which could also be referring to the rating.

Even if people do use harsh language they could make it so that you can only use voice chat with friends. For example they could have you be able to use Voice Chat in friend battles in Brawl and in random battles they let you use short messages. Not the best type of Voice Chat system but better than nothing.
 
It's a tough call because Nitendo is trying to make everyone happy in this decision....

They know we will like voice chat but if its limited to only our Wii friends we wont be happy, because honestly you will be tracking down more people to make them your friends then you are playing, if all we use is the friends code. Thats to much of an easy out for Nintendo to do it that way and call it finished, and I think they know that..

Now you have the younger children, although they have parental controls some parents might not bother setting them or know how to in the first place, children these days are usually more tech suave then there parents, alot of them could even get around it if they wanted to.

Hmm so what to do. You can't just keep saying the old phrase "Game Experience May Change During Online Play" and think it will fly with parents when on an E-rated game there child gets sworn at online. Thats a big NO , and Nintendo knows it. The same attitude would go for the majority of causal gamers that don't know what the online chat is like ahead of time they will be disgusted by it.

I personally find there to be an easy fix to please all parties.

Every game EC,E,E10+ Should offer Voice Chat ONLY with friends code so parents can see who there children are listening too, if it gets too outta hand they can even track the bastard down... ha ha

Now games T,M,AO you have free range voice chat available to anyone! No friends code needed here it's built right in. Then any complaint from a parent that the children may have experienced something to graphic with Nitnendo's online chat is eaisly pushed aside by saying, you let your children play a game that was rated for a more mature audience, it is your own consequence not ours that they came across something included in that rating category.

Easy argument makes everyone happy in the end! And no one has an excuse to be mad at anyone else.
 
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Wouldn't the parents be to blame? Shouldn't they have some common sense knowing that there are jerks online? I agree most of the time Kids are the ones doing the trash talking. BECAUSE THEY DON'T KNOW ANY BETTER!
There are parental controls on the Wii. Isn't it possible for there to be an option to block an online part of a game? Discuss


Wezeles, most of the Wiis good games are made by Nintendo. And most Nintendo games are E - E10. ( Well besides the Zelda games, but they're not online compatible. )
 
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Well that totally kills my expectations for the game...

Personally, I was looking forward to voice chat, it's a race, so I can't imagine people talking much anyway, but just a general chat would make it a tad more competitive. What really annoys me was the select phrases, absolutely no one will use those, and more likely they'll be a string of out-dated slanged compliments from the early 90's. Nintendo are so cool.

I think there should just be a parental warning at the start of the game that online play is going to attract idiots, no matter what. Anyhow, the parents can surely select the controls themselves if they can work out how to connect to wi-fi manually. Tch.

Everyone should just listen to Wezeles!
 
Fire Flower said:
Wezeles, most of the Wiis good games are made by Nintendo. And most Nintendo games are E - E10. ( Well besides the Zelda games, but they're not online compatible. )

Acctually most Nintendo games that are online right now are split between E and T rated games. The majority of online games currently are acctually by 3rd party devs rating mostly from T-M.

Obviously games like Mario Strikers,Mario Kart and all the other baseball,tennis,golf are gonna be E rated games, but do we need Voice Chat with these style games? not really with sports games.
If so it would be with your personal friends, and you can schedual a time to meet up, specially if your into it enough to make a team online.
Again like I said use your friends code for this type of game/rated game. There isn't much reason to talk to anyone besides the people on your own team.

Now the majority of games that will use Voice "unappropriately" will probably be FPS,Fighting games and they will all be atleast Teen-M ratings so its not an issue.

I agree its the parents to blame, but in this case they have always blamed everything on video games, this is why we have the rating system in the first place! Parents balming video games for there kids, and them being to ignorant of what there children do they need a big DUMMY stiker on each game to let them know its an OK buy.

So if you tie it into the rating system they have no way to blame anyone else but themself for letting a game not suited for there children into the house. People always try to shift blame, if you don't make it black and white a fight will always break out.
 
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wezeles said:
It's a tough call because Nitendo is trying to make everyone happy in this decision....

They know we will like voice chat but if its limited to only our Wii friends we wont be happy, because honestly you will be tracking down more people to make them your friends then you are playing, if all we use is the friends code. Thats to much of an easy out for Nintendo to do it that way and call it finished, and I think they know that..

Now you have the younger children, although they have parental controls some parents might not bother setting them or know how to in the first place, children these days are usually more tech suave then there parents, alot of them could even get around it if they wanted to.

Hmm so what to do. You can't just keep saying the old phrase "Game Experience May Change During Online Play" and think it will fly with parents when on an E-rated game there child gets sworn at online. Thats a big NO , and Nintendo knows it. The same attitude would go for the majority of causal gamers that don't know what the online chat is like ahead of time they will be disgusted by it.

I personally find there to be an easy fix to please all parties.

Every game EC,E,E10+ Should offer Voice Chat ONLY with friends code so parents can see who there children are listening too, if it gets too outta hand they can even track the bastard down... ha ha

Now games T,M,AO you have free range voice chat available to anyone! No friends code needed here it's built right in. Then any complaint from a parent that the children may have experienced something to graphic with Nitnendo's online chat is eaisly pushed aside by saying, you let your children play a game that was rated for a more mature audience, it is your own consequence not ours that they came across something included in that rating category.

Easy argument makes everyone happy in the end! And no one has an excuse to be mad at anyone else.

I like the way you're thinking in those last few paragraphs.

I mean, isn't that the point of the ratings? By owning an M game, it's assumed that every player is at least 17. This means that the vast majority of players will be legal adults. Should Nintendo really be placing these ridiculous restrictions on adults?
 
The majority of their audience seem to be kiddiwinks. Should be two versions, one being shitty and watered down and the other an expansion with voice chat.
 
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