Nintendo confirms Animal Crossing: City Folk
Tuesday, July 15th, 2008 at 12:37pm by Derek
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.
July 15th, 2008 at 12:43 pm
Yay!
July 15th, 2008 at 1:01 pm
initial reaction: meh. animal crossing with really good online could be good but so far almost all of nintendo’s online offerings have been disappointing.
July 15th, 2008 at 1:16 pm
Even if this announcement does excite you for Animal Crossing, it SHOULD excite you for WiiSpeak. Thank God we now have a way to voice chat with other players. I’m not quite sure yet if I would prefer this to a single headset, though. When I saw players fishing together and chatting, I thought, “This will keep me interested in Animal Crossing a lot longer than Wild World on DS.” I hope they figure out a way to actually meet new people in the game besides swapping friends codes online. I would rather meet someone completely new and random.
July 15th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
this is an absolutely great example of where nintendo’s online strategy could destroy an otherwise promising game. if you can’t voice chat with random strangers - only with your friends - and if friend codes are involved in any mandatory sort of way, the game will honestly be ruined.
July 15th, 2008 at 1:26 pm
I couldn’t agree more, Ben. We’re all too familiar with the tedious nature of calling a friend to swap friend codes. It’s not even easy enough with Mario Kart!
I want to be able to approach someone in game, strike up a voice chat, and then instantly add them to my friends’ list in-game. Why would they not want this sort of interaction? Isn’t that what going to the city should be all about?
July 15th, 2008 at 1:43 pm
Exactly - i remember in metroid prime hunters for the DS, after you battled someone in a random match you could hit “add as rival” and they would be added to a list so you could see their name and stats and if they were online. you couldn’t voice chat with them, but at least you could play them again. it would be nice if nintendo did something like that for animal crossing wii - if you met a random person you could just add them to your list and play with them again.
it would be nice if they let you voice chat random people but i don’t think they will.
July 15th, 2008 at 1:50 pm
Ive got a friend with 2 daughters, age 10 and 12. They love animal crossing on the cube and ds. Having them make fun of my town in the new game will be great. The thought of some creep seeking out young girls and saying god knows what to them scares me. Im an adult, and i agree, chatting with strangers would be nice. However, I gladly give up that priviledge if it means one less way for pedophiles to come in contact with kids. On the surface it is a kids game and if kids could easily make contact with strangers, that is a recipe for some terrible headlines.
I realize I’m in the minority here. Yes parents should always be watching their kids, and yes there is parental controls. But lets get real. Parents cant always watch their kids and the kids would have to explain to the parents how to work the parental controls.
Theres some bad people in this world and unfortunatly we all have make sacrifices because of them.
July 15th, 2008 at 2:11 pm
Okay bbelt, you win this round. I too have kids aged 5 and 10, who LOVE Animal Crossing.
Compromise: Parental controls integrated so that you control your kids’ contacts in game and can disable voice chat, but unrestrained access for adult players.
July 15th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
This is fantastic! Wii speak was totally unexpected. I’ve never played animal crossing before, but this game seems like a good time to start.
July 16th, 2008 at 4:16 pm
Oh come on, not the pedophile argument again, what is this, Fox News?!
How many kids have been seduced and molested by adults through MMORPGS, Second Life or Xbox Live? That’s right, NONE. So how high are the odds that your kid, who will be walking around voice chatting with numerable other persons (ranging from grannies to other kids), whose messages are apparently public to everyone, will be confronted by some guy proposing to buy him/her a train ticket to Alabama to come suck on his balls next Saturday? That’s right, NONE!
Is there a risk that your kid might be approached in a way you, as a parent, find inappropriate? Hell yes. Deal with it, that’s part of growing up. There are assholes and pervs in your street, in your kids’ schools, in Sunday school, on your kids’ sportsteam, and among your kids’ friends. Maybe we should introduce friend codes for them too, how’s that for an idea?
July 18th, 2008 at 4:36 pm
I agree with Luigifan14.By the way , I like your username.