November 7, 2008 – 3:00 pm
Nintendo announces their Wii speak accessory and gamers yawn collectively as this news is released, seeing as this is nothing new to the PC, PS3, Xbox 360 or any gaming console. Welcome to the new millennium Nintendo, nice of you to join us, we also have cell phones now.
In case you did not know, the Wii Speak will allow for chatting now and can be purchased separately for $30 or with Animal Crossing for $70. Nintendo is also creating a new channel for users to sit and chat with each other aptly named the Wii Speak Channel. Look for this in December.
Hit the jump for the press release.
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September 16, 2008 – 9:00 pm
WTF? This cant be for real you must be thinking, well unforatunately it is. Seems like the US government believes that World of Warcraft can do more than just corrupt a young person’s mind and waste your time in real life. The government believes that WoW can be used to plot and set into motion dastardly terrorist plans on a real life scale.
There’s been no public proof to date of terrorists hatching plots in virtual worlds. But online spaces like World of Warcraft are making some spooks, generals and Congressmen extremely nervous. They imagine terrorists rehearsing attacks in these worlds, just like the U.S. military trains with commercial shoot-em-up games. They worry that the massively multiplayer games make it incredibly easy to gather plotters from around the world. But, mostly, virtual worlds are nerve-wracking to spies because they’re so hard to monitor. The accounts are pseudonymous. The access is global. The jargon is thick. And most of the spy agencies’ employees aren’t exactly level-70 shamans.
The thought process is that the in game capability of chatting and the games lingo can be used to develop a plan that no one currently would be able to decode. Using in game talk like raids, loot, races and city names to take the place of actual real life targets and strategies. Seems to me that the FBI needs to employ some hardcore gamers to help them crack some of this.
Hit the jump to read more about World of Warcraft as a terrorist plot and to see a mock scenario that has been set up.
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February 28, 2008 – 9:02 am
Remember how Mario Kart for Wii was only going to have text chat? Time to revise that statement. IGN got an update from Nintendo.
Apparently, gamers will only be able to select from a pre-determined number of phrases that can be sent along as rudimentary texts before matches. Nintendo is clearly playing it safe.
You’ve got to be freaking kidding me. Maybe they should allow full chat and have Chris Hansen monitor everything. Hopefully there’s a text choice there to tell a player to suck my balls.
