Topic: Can’t believe that Splatoon 2 is the only game with voice chat…

The inability to communicate via text or voice on Switch is just mind blowing. The fact that there are so many games now and only 1 has voice chat is just odd. I would at least think that Nintendo games like Arms and Mario Kart would have added this feature by now. When searching online I’m not really finding anything regarding the voice chat.
Am I the only one confused by the lack of voice chat games?

The first time I heard about this App, I thought, you could make a Chatroom. I would have loved to talk with visitors in my Minecraft world. The way how Nintendo is handling this App is just outdated.

With whom would you talk over voice chat in Mario Kart and ARMS? Your competition, that's right! And what would anybody online say to competitors, who, e.g. just hit them with a Red Shell? Not very nice things - profanity, curses! And that in a kid's game from one of the most kid-friendly companies in the world! That's also why I think Voice Chat in Spla2n is so clunky and backwards: So nobody would use it more than once or twice! Profanity in a colorful Nintendo game... that's like taking your kids to the latest Disney animation and there's Anna swearing up a storm!

Looking at Nintendo and their image, this is not very surprising nor confusing.

@GoldenGamer88
I understand your view, but this could easily be handled by allowing parents to block voice via parental application or based on age of the user profile.

The reason I mentioned Mario Kart and Arms is because Nintendo created an online app that pretty much does nothing for any other game except Splatoon 2. I would be happy with Mario Kart and Arms at least having detailed stats added to the application. Maybe leader boards as well. Otherwise I'm not sure why there is even an app.

Moving on to games like Doom. It's rated M for mature. There shouldn't be a reason for a kid to be playing this and it should have voice chat, but as we know there will most likely be a huge number of kids playing this game along with LA Noire also rated M.

I thought the app would work like Discord, so you could just talk to people regardless of what you're playing. It's ridiculous that you have to be in one specific game to be able to use it.

You must be new to Nintendo. There's nothing new in Nintendo's attitude though.

@Landlord That'd certainly be a possibility. But this would raise the question how many parents even know about such possibilities. Now I don't know exact numbers but at university, I've learned that any PR expert has to take the stupidest of people into consideration because are the least informed yet have the same abilities of causing a PR disaster on the internet. Let's say you're a parent who works most of the day and don't spend as much time observing your child's actions. Then, you come home and hear your child being told to you know where I'm going. The child wouldn't say there's parental control in fear of restrictions and then the parent goes complain on the internet about the incident. Sure, the parent would quickly be informed of the parental controls but that's too late to prevent a small PR disaster. Now, that's just a possibility and I have no idea of how likely this is. Overall, I am not that well-versed in voice chat on other platforms or games and how those deal with profanity so my views are limited to the PR realm and how Nintendo may feel. Restricting the voice chat via the profile's age could be bypassed by letting a parent register for them but it seems like the fail-safer version to me.

As for the Online App, I feel like this is only a beta version of what the app will one day. Or it's simply a way to calm those crying for a voice chat function for Splatoon (where VC is needed due to the cooperative nature of the game).

@Dogorilla I wish that's how it worked too. But now it's done on a weird game per game basis. Same with button mapping. There's no universal button mapping function on the Switch, so games like ARMS need their own button mapping feature. Why is it not a standard feature of the Switch? Would make everything so much easier.

@Lloyd / @Dogorilla

Found a solution that will hopefully spread like wildfire.

Create a discord account with no more than 5 letter username.
Once created it will look similar to mine Lorde#8278.
Now update your Nintendo Nickname to match this format.
You can then easily add anyone to Discord where the Nintendo nickname matches this format.

This should at least make things easier for communicating until Nintendo comes up with a real solution.

Spread the word

Does Nintendo Life have an official Discord server? If not, someone should get on that - it'd be good to have our own alternative solution to online chat etc.