Nintendo has confirmed live voice chat during their presentation of Animal Crossing: City Folk at the E3 press conference, WiiSpeak is the new coined name for it. It will not be a headset but more of a speaker device that will sit on top of the sensor bar. The speaker will pick up a lot of sound in the area since it is not a microphone by your mouth, so I can see this becoming a bit annoying with listening to other gamer’s background noise while you play.

You can now chat with friends across the world and build further gaming relationships says Nintendo. Nothing new if you have been playing on other consoles.

I am curious how Nintendo will protect it’s younger gamers against profanity and exposure to the wrong elements by introducing voice chat? WiiSPeak seems interesting, but it is a needed option for the Wii if they want to be taken seriously against MS and Sony online.