I don't know if anybody mentioned this cause there are many comments but the Wiimote doesn't have a mic built into it, the DS does. Anyways...it sucks but this just means that Nintendo is looking out for people and kids.

I am trying to look at this piece of poo positively!

You people are missing the point. And it's obvious why.

All these anti-pedo measures are crimping our style... I wanted to play SSBB with my brother and be able to talk trash like we did back with the original... now I gotta make a phone call? And if voice chat's going to kill the bandwidth, the issue would be with the Wiis network coding. Great console, but you don't have to guzzle Nintendo's koolaid so readily.

"Im so lonely...."

Ah gawd Klytus just stfu. Why don't you take a trip to the smash bros. dojo and look by yourself what brawl is all about?

Horray! I'll be able to enjoy my online brawl in peace rather than having to put up with the incoherent ramblings of some 13-year-old kid! Thank God!

wow, this got ridiculously heated, very quickly.

Personally I don't think Brawl needs voice chat, even when I play with friends we really don't say much during the matches anyway. It really makes the taunts that much more effective as well, especially with each character having four now. I can see why people might think its a good idea, but its really not necessary.

I'm not defending Nintendo either, when it comes to online they are completely inept, but this choice seems to be better for the GAMEPLAY, which is all I care about. The less lag the better, and its free... and its wireless. SO even though it seems like they are in the stone age, you might want to think about the actual decision for this SITUATION. It was the best option, I think.

I don't really care about no voice chat or the gimped online system. It's the disappointing final roster that gets me.

Simple minded Nintendo strikes again!

If it was voice chat enabled, there'd be freakout scare pieces on the local news somewhere, guaranteed. Just like with Pictochat.

Sucks, but doesn't bother me personally too much. As has been pointed out, most conversation during a match amounts to "Fuck! I died," or "Pikachu is cheap and I hope you get cancer."

Mr Bas and everyone else arguing that this is a complete non-issue for everybody no matter what so get over it are either ignoring some of the finer points I and others have made here or are simply not logical debaters. We hear your opinion, we've digested it, but it's not the be-all-end-all, and not all of us agree.

Sorry for inconvenience.

I love Nintendo making choices for me.

I think the worst part of all the bitching is that somewhere along the way we stopped thinking of online features as being supplemental to the core game, and now we seem to think they're fucking required in every game out there.

This isn't to say that it's not discouraging to see Nintendo being a bit too guarded with their online shit, or being totally backward thinking depending on how you wanna look at it, but gamers are sort of assholes when they don't get what they think they have the right to.

Yeah, as consumers our opinions ought to help shape what we're getting, but the sense of self-importance that mindset has instilled in some people is downright appalling. There's never any middle ground. If a developer leaves out even one feature that self-absorbed gamers think ought to have been included and they cry foul. Then we get this sort of discussion.

Eh, I'd like to see Nintendo get their act together sure, and voice-chat might have been cool to have in Brawl, but the lack of a secondary (If complimentary) feature aint worth whining about to my mind.

I could not conceivably care less that voice chat is missing from this game.

Klytus is a cunt. I read it on the internets.

At least it is for me.

I don't mind the lack of chat. It's the lack of a ranking system that really irks me. I don't care if I can't hear people bitching that something's wrong with their controller. I just want to know if the person I'm facing will be a challenge.

Bas, you're sitting here complaining about people complaining. It's a comment thread—we're commenting, and you're commenting. Some people are using heavy language (not least of all you) but that's normal.

There was a feature I was looking forward to that apparently got the axe. I'm disappointed, and I explained why. I explained why in my situation this lessens the enjoyment I'll eventually have. That's all.

I'm not sure why you're so dead-set on shutting people's disappointment up. I'm still buying the game, I'm still going to love it, and with my friends who can/will, I'm going to Skype or iChat with them while I play. As I've already said, I'm basically doing exactly what you suggest I do.

You're accusing people of saying things they're not saying, contradicting yourself within the same posts, and most importantly you're focusing wholly on your own opinions rather than reading other people's post carefully (you continually miss many of our counter-points).

And yeah, this is the Internet, which is why I'm still sitting here arguing with an idiot with no reading comprehension. Chill out. And while you're at it, if you don't like people complaining about little features or the lack thereof, don't read the comments to an article whose sole purpose is to discuss our reactions to an axed feature. The title should have clued you in.

@GuitarAtomik
So don't act like if it was.

I completely agree with you that we can't accept every thing Nintendo does but just because "the competition" uses these "standards" that doesn't mean that Nintendo has to use them too, it just doesn't fit in the concept of the Wii. Some people are still thinking Nintendo is competeing with MS and Sony on the same level but you know what? They're not. Read what I'll write to David Quinn and you'll understand why they do things like this.

@David Quinn Whatever
Look dude, I completely don't care if you buy the game or not, good for you if you'll enjoy a great game that doesn't essenitially need voice-chat, you're just naive expecting something like that from Nintendo, it's not my fault your childhood dream has been crushed just because you thought YOU could shape the game like you want. Sakurai himself said it, I said it: We feel sorry about it but in the end this is still like expecting from Microsoft Mod-Support for Unreal Tournament 3, they just won't do it so easily. But hey, have fun getting disappointed by every "cut" feature in every Nintendo game, it's going to happen a fuckload of times.

And about the other's posts: Everybody who has a problem with the absence of voice-chat has brought the point that you could make it friends-only or include a mute button or parental controls and so on. But hey, not every parent is as mindful as you and watching every step of their children. The average parents aren't going to check if there are parental controls in the game and when little Billy finally finds out what a threesome or a facial is, it isn't the parents fault for not caring no, it's Nintendos and you know that. So please look at it from another perspective before you talk shit about missing counter points. By now you should know that Nintendo doesn't care as much about their core-fanbase as they do about children and their retarded parents. Not everything revolves about getting your game-sessions as convenient as possible.

Man that fucking sucks.

Well in an FPS you can take cover and have the downtime to mute individual people, if you stop for a second in SSBB you're toast. But that's besides the point.

You guys remember that Nintendo's first two systems were called the Famicom right? (That means FAMILY COMPUTER)
And gamers are distinctly NOT family friendly. Nintendo is just saying that they know how awesome their games are, and if you don't like conforming to their rules on their system you can happily go somewhere else and they will still be doing just fine.