Switch 2 will end two decades trying to chat with Nintendo’s awkward voice

Switch 2 will end two decades trying to chat with Nintendo's awkward voice

This story was first published on Switchboard, a newsletter from Polygon providing all the latest news, reports and rumors and direct rumors for your inbox. Register here to get it weekly.


One of the new features that Nintendo offered at Switen 2 revealed that last week was Gamechat, an integrated-power-to-and-integrated communication system that you paid for Nintendo Switch Online-that allows players to communicate through voice chat and video chat and share games together.

Serious online game players have done this for many years, through services like Discord, Venttrilo and Steam. Nintendo’s own solutions for voice and video chat have been defeated and tested for the past two decades, and the appearance of Gamechat is a sign that the company has finally carried out voices and videos.

It is not because of the lack of effort. Nintendo brought a voice to some of her games in early 2006, through Nintendo’s Wi-Fi connection service. But unlike Gamechat, Nintendo often has access to voice and video conversations on the basis of each game or it reduced the chat load with external applications.

But as Nintendo’s Sumikazu Ono, the person in charge of monitoring the development of the integrated features of Switch 2, said in an interview on the Nintendo website, the goal of GameChat is not needed.

Chat by voice or video to play games often involves a little work in setting up the device, he explains Nintendo’s Yoshitaka Tamura in that interview. However, Switch 2 has integrated microphone, so you can easily use voice chat and Nintendo Switch 2, sold separately, very simple to use with a setting that is not too complicated.

It is a different way compared to the way Nintendo processes chat by voice. When Nintendo has a chat in games like The main hunter of MetroidThen Diamond Pokémon And PearlAnd Previous war: Date of destructionPlayers need to enter 12 -digit friends code to add other players to their friends list to talk to them. Voice chats in the Nintendo DS games are limited to certain modes, awkward and low quality.

Nintendo later developed an exclusive microphone for Wii called Wii Say, supported by about a dozen games for the system, including Animal Crossing: City Folk And Tri -monster hunter. Nintendo has even created a Wii drunk channel for the control panel, but the chat features are limited to users who have shared friends code together.

Nintendo tried chat again on Wii U, with Wii U Chat, including videos provided by the system’s gamepad, with integrated camera and microphone. Wii U conversation is limited, but it includes an interesting feature: users can draw on the screen to share messages with anyone at the other end of the call. (Wii U Chat closed with Miiverse in 2017.)

For switches, Nintendo decided to apply smartphones to handle conversations. Again, it is only supported in certain games and Nintendo’s solution is not perfect. Many users have chosen not to use Nintendo’s applications and get stuck with existing communication applications like Discord to handle their real -time conversations.

Voice chat through the Nintendo Switch online application is the latest example of Nintendo’s caution when it comes to online interactions. Nintendo has also released a Nintendo Switch Parental Controls application, allowing parents to control the game time and whether children can use features such as conversation. Parent control application may allow parents to approve who is a child who can play games on the basis of users.

Nintendo finally seemed a bit more comfortable with online interactions, because it made them wider at the system level with Switch 2. It could be a reflection of how popular video conversations became-especially when the gamechat was developed in 2020, at the peak of the epidemic and when zooming in becoming friends and companies. Thanks to the current Nintendo accounts, it has been used for many years by tens of millions of players, which will be easier than ever to connect with voice and video chats on the Nintendo dashboard. There is a whole button for it.

For the owners of Switch 2, cautious people like Nintendo for the past two decades, Takuhiro Dohta, senior director of Nintendo EPD programming management team, said in a conversation in a conversation. [of users]Because there will certainly be people who like to talk and there are people who don’t like to talk.

Therefore, while the increasing pain of Nintendo’s voice (and often annoying) in many generations of consoles, most of that embarrassment seems to have been removed for Switch 2. However, remember that Gamechat will only be free for a limited time. You may want to install the Nintendo Switch online application on your phone if you don’t feel like you want to pay for your friends.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *