Another shot across the bow this morning to those who think WiiSpeak was just some gimmick developed by Nintendo so they could throw it on store shelves alongside Animal Crossing: City Folk and then forget about it (a la R.O.B.):

“We’re always sharing information with the hardware group and all the teams within Nintendo so we can keep track of things. But in this case we were talking and they told me that they had this microphone in development and I said, ‘Really, that would work well with Animal Crossing. Here’s what we’d like it to do…” [Official Nintendo Magazine interview with Katsuya Eguchi, producer of Animal Crossing: City Folk, via Nintendo Everything]

To me that says there a few more first party games in the works (or near completion, given Animal Crossing’s fall release date) that will implement some cool WiiSpeak functionality (with Friend Codes!)

Other than the exciting Pikmin 3 announcement Nintendo’s E3 2008 Developer Roundtable presented more info on Animal Crossing, Wii Music, and Wii Sports Resort. Thankfully more details concerning City Folk’s online abilities were given including support for Animal Crossing Wild World! Hit the jump for a list of AC details.

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Interesting praise from ars technica this afternoon about the Wii Speak microphone.

All this voice chat was happening courtesy of the USB “Wii Speak” microphone, placed on top of the sensor bar of the demo Wii. What was impressive was that, in a loud room filled with the sounds of many people enjoying their demos, the speaker was able to pick up my voice from around ten feet away as I talked to Mario in a normal speaking voice. I had a comfortable conversation with Martinet, and we had no problems hearing each other or understanding what the other person was saying, even in these less-than-ideal circumstances. In other words, the Wii Speak speaker is a pretty nifty piece of tech.

The Mario voice was provided by none other than Charles Martinet, the voice of Mario, who was hidden away in another room. It’s another Wii accessory, sure, but it works as advertised.

Gamespot managed to grab the official release date for the just announced Animal Crossing game for the Wii. Animal Crossing: City Folk is set to release on November 16th, 2008. It is still unknown at this time whether, or not Nintendo’s new WiiSpeak microphone will launch on the same day, but it would make perfect sense to have it coincide with the games release.

Hit the jump for updated information!

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Nintendo’s first big announcement this morning was exciting, albeit somewhat expected; a new Animal Crossing is coming to Wii.

Animal Crossing: City Folk will ship this holiday season with the new WiiSpeak peripheral, a “community microphone” focused on making online voice chat a group affair.

According to Nintendo’s E3 footage, WiiSpeak is placed atop the Wii sensor bar and, unlike a headset, captures the voices of several individual Wii players at once.

Infendo will have more details as they are announced.