If you counted yourself among the many that were looking forward to seeing voice chat make an appearance in Super Smash Bros. Brawl for the Wii, your hopes have just been dashed. Speaking with IGN, Masahiro Sakurai let the bad news slip:
“Well, when I first started making Smash Bros. Brawl, I thought it would be wonderful if online battles between friends had voice chat and potentially keyboard based chat as well. But there are all sorts of rules and regulations regarding communication on the Wii platform and so it was apparent to me that it just wouldn’t come together, we weren’t going to be able to do it, so we decided to cancel that feature. I’m very sorry about that. But if you’re really desperate for it, you could set up Skype by your game station and go at it with a friend if you like”
This was never a deal-breaker for me, but I’m still pondering over that part about “all sorts of rules and regulations” concerning communications on the Wii platform. So this isn’t something mandated by the FCC, but rather an internal Nintendo thing? So much for Nintendo’s claim of avoiding the pitfalls of restrictions. Sad news indeed, but we all know this game’s going to rock, regardless of this.
[Thanks, Adam!]
