It looks like, from what I’m reading, that Wii Speak will not work with games that came out before it did. That means Mario Kart Wii online is still broken and useless IMO. What the hell? I’ve never known Nintendo to drop the ball this badly. Xbox had great, fun voicechat in 2002. Six years ago. Wake up, Nintendo! People middle school age and up don’t want to play online without being able to talk, and we want to play online!
Personally I never want to talk to the people I’m playing with online unless I personally know them; I inevitably want to mute them all within minutes.
Personally, if I cannot type to you, or talk to you, or communicate with you in any way, I’m not going to waste my time going online. I’m just going to play the computer - that at least has the advantage of not having to wait for a game. I don’t want to have to get on the phone with real life friends who want to play - which I’ve actually done a few times and felt like an asshole.
Sounds good to me. 
I can’t stand playing online games with strangers due to the massively high asshole to normal person ratio. It’s marginally more tolerable when I don’t have to listen to the twelve year olds.
I’ve taken a quick glance around for some news articles and haven’t found anything that says this. Can you point me to a cite, please?
I just googled Wii Speak and read the links that came up . . . One of them is a Yahoo Answers link, one is a gaming message board, IIRC. I’m not going to go searching around again just to prove I didn’t make it all up . . . Just type wii speak into google. The description on Amazon specifically says it works for Animal Crossing, and the Wikipedia article says it’s only compatible with Animal Crossing now and The Conduit in the future IIRC.
Man… I was really really looking forward to some mario kart trash talk online. 
Suck.
I hope they can rectify that, although it does explain why they only show people playing animal crossing using the thing. I figured it was just a way to promote two games at once.
ETA: although now that I think about it, the placement of the Wii Speak accessory is a little clunky for games with a lot of music and stuff. Right on the TV? It would pick up a lot of game music and you’d never be able to hear anybody. It kind of requires a quieter game like Animal Crossing doesn’t it? I was thinking the idea was kind of neat- but now I’m not so sure.
The unique thing about it is supposed to be that it doesn’t pick up all the noise from the game, but I don’t know how well it works in practice.
Another reason why the Wii is simply lacking. Mario Kart is broken for various reasons. Nintendo’s online multiplayer offering in any game is crippled with no chat.
Besides, you guys act like there aren’t older folks out there that play games that network. You don’t have to put up with the Timmies.
Wii Speak cannot work with any game that wasn’t programmed with it in mind because the Wii didn’t have a voice chat feature until then. And you can’t run the Wii Speak Channel in the background with a game running on top of it because the Wii (well, any console really) doesn’t allow that kind of multitasking.
How this proves the Wii is “lacking” and “broken” is beyond me though.
ETA: Voice chat is not a mandatory feature on PS3 games either. The 360 is the exception, which many of us would like to be the rule.
Really? My options are play with people I know or with the general gaming public which from experience consists mainly of people I don’t want to play which means I have to have the contacts first. Just how do I build a vast network of contacts with people who I’ve never met in any sense so that I might have a reasonably large pool of people to play with any game I happen to choose at the moment other than dealing with jerks and morons for hundreds of hours of not fun “play”?
Oh, and I typically don’t buy the “hot” games since I’m not a trend follower and would rather spend $60 on five to ten games instead of just one, so I’ll need to do this without playing the games that are heavily populated.
Solve that chicken and egg problem and you might be able to boost the percentage of people who play their games online over 10%.
Shh! Don’t tell LOUNE that most people don’t play games online. You’ll hurt his feelings.
But I have to give him credit, he did start a pretty decent SDMB Xbox Live community. The problem is that since we’re all adults with jobs and spouses and lives, there’s rarely more than 1 or 2 of us online at any given time. And even then, I have never been playing the same game that anyone else on there is playing (I know somebody out there in Doperland plays MK vs DCU, where are you?).
Nintendo will release “Mario Kart Wii Speak Edition” and sell it for $50.
Mark my words.
Nintendo blows and I won’t buy another Nintendo console again. Handheld yes, but not console.
Not sure if you’re addressing Least Original or me with the last line, but FTR I’m happy with my Wii. It’s the only console of this generation I own and I don’t think I’d have it another way. I just think Mario Kart Wii’s online portion is broken and lacking.
I think every game in this day and age should have an ability to patch built into it. They had to know Wii Speak was coming down the pipe when they made Mario Kart, and if they couldn’t quite program for it yet, they should have at least added a backdoor to install the upgrade later. I was looking forward to Mario Kart more than any other Wii game before or since, and I was pretty let down. I was playing Kart Rider online to warm up for it, thinking MK would be waaayyyy better, and I actually ended up thinking Kart Rider is the superior game.
That said, I probably wouldn’t pay $50 just out of protest, but if they put out MK Wii Speak Edition for ~$20 I’d probably be a sucker and buy it. I really wanted to talk to my friends and family around the country while we raced each other.
Too many good games. Can’t afford to play lame ones.
I don’t fully disagree with you in terms of Nintendo’s online gaming is somewhat clunky. However- it is also… Free.
I can only bitch so much about something that makes a game more playable- that I don’t have to pay anything extra for.
Which games does it make more playable? I’ve only played Mario Kart online so far and I found it not worth the lag time and waiting for a game.
You certainly can bitch. Live is 50 bucks a year. I’d pay 100. Really, 50 bucks a year is $4.17 a month. Do you drink coffee at Starbucks or Panera? Go out to eat? Have a hobby?
You get where I’m going with this. You get what you pay for with the Wii.
What would make Mario Kart worthwhile would be an organized Friends List and chat, so I can talk to my friends instead of setting up the chat room on Xbox Live.
I pretty much only play Mario Kart online as well. I don’t ever have any lag time. I do agree the wait between games is a little annoying, but it gives everybody a chance to pick their game and whatnot.
Wii Online is free, yes, but so is PSN, which is still infinitely better than anything Nintendo offers (though inferior to XBL by a long shot. $50 a year is totally worth it, XBL is fantastic) and I dunno, maybe I’m just strange, but I really don’t run into enough assholes online when I game to make it a big deal, and those I do run into I just mute, which takes all of 10 seconds to do. I’ve actually met quite a few people on XBL that I enjoy gaming with. Sure there are assholes, sure there are a LOT of assholes, but it never really ruins the experience for me. Nintendo just dropped the ball really badly with this, it was my biggest gripe with the Wii when it came out, and it still is a huge gripe these days. They just don’t get it. Playing Wii online with friends is still easier to do if you call them on the phone to set it up, and that’s just wrong. Online gaming just isn’t a priority for Nintendo (quite frankly, neither is appeasing long time fans who’ve been with them since the original NES, like myself), and it really should be
Voice chat allows strategy games to basically include strategy. We’re talkin basic tactics in games like COD or Ghost Recon or any other shooter. Any game where you have to cooperate with other players is simply impossible on the Wii atm, will Wii Speak change that? I can hope, but I’ve been very disappointed in the Wii overall since I got one (the day they came out). There are a few good games for it, but they are very few and far between, and most of the ones I play are better with a Gamecube controller (Mario Kart Wii and SSBB being perfect examples of this). I have a Wii and a 360 and to be honest I haven’t touched my Wii since just after MK came out, whereas I play my 360 pretty darn often.
As for only 10% of people playing games online… really? I think the 6 million plus XBL subscribers (not to mention the bajillion WoW players) would have to disagree with you there