I think its pathetic that some people want to toss aside $100 gamepad, the whole basis of Wii U, for a freakin gamecube controller. Nintendo even told these people that prefer the pro controller, put the gamepad on its own stand directly in front of you, where its still very useful. Plug in the headset to the gamepad, and you're set. I owned 3 turtle beaches for 360, and it had tons of wires, why no one complains about that but ONLY when it comes to Nintendo do they start bitching?

so i read a lot of posts about out CoD will be soo much better on wii U because you can have one person on the gamepad and one on the TV.    ..but now we find out that the guy not on the gamepad can't have voice chat.  ..not sure how much online multiplayer you've played but voice chat is sort of critical to the experiance.  if the second guy can't be on voice the 2 player option is fairly gimped.

..and wii had voice chat capability.  having voice chat capability in of itself isn't impressive as it became standard about 5-6 years ago when  both sony and nintedo followed MS's lead.  but nintendo promised a roboust online network for the wii U and cross game chat is something xbl has already done for years so it's a bit conerning that nintendo isn't meeting the established baseline.

but hey, you just skipped right over the legiment critiques and went straight pretending that nintendo is god. 

Thanks Nintendo... I have to use skype again. How does this help anyone? You piss people off who want the feature. Which should be required in the system interface by default. How am I suppose to talk to a friend where I live in NYC, and he lives in Australia...

That's completely untrue.

If I'm not mistaken, part of the reasoning behind the Wii U is to once more draw the interest of the core market.  That means taking some gamers back from Microsoft and Sony, and hopefully holding on to those people when the PS4 and 720 release.  Now, I don't care about cross-game chat personally, but there are a lot of people who do, and it was obviously an error on Sony's part to not allow for it going into the current generation.  Nintendo has to know that.  It also has to be considered that some Nintendo fans who are upgrading from the Wii would also like to have cross-game chat.

Because people want a particular feature doesn't mean they're just hating on something that doesn't have it.  As far as people not expecting the Wii U to have cross-game chat, I disagree.  Nintendo seemed very serious about upgrading their online components, and honestly, cross-game chat would probably be considered a standard feature for next gen by most people.

I'm also getting a little tired of media conspiracy conclusions on every negative article.  A negative is a negative and it should be reported.  And this is a negative.

Now, all that being said, it's still possible that Nintendo hasn't given out all revelant information.  They could still clarify things to turn this into a positive.  We'll have to wait and see about that.  I would love to hear more from them about this decision.

Massive problem not having cross game chat, that cancels any online play on wii u for me and my friends if we get one.

One of the mistakes Sony did with PS3 was the lack of Cross Game Voice Chat... I can't accept PS4 without that feature (the PSVita already have).

So Nintendo is doing the same mistake that Sony did six years ago.

That's a really nice feature in Live but you need to pay to use it because it's a exclusive feature (PS3 and Wii don't have it).

I still never understood what was so important about this feature, tbh. It's similar to Achievements. People get in these screaming fits about how essential it is to the gaming experience, but i just don't see it.

I wonder why they put a microphone on the pad for... In that singing game, you hold the pad near your face to read the lyrics and with your other hand you've got a wired usb microphone.

I hated voice chat in COD.  I wish they had an option to have it turned off by default because most of it is just 12 years olds using racial slurs and profranity.

I played COD my PS3 and stayed number 1 in th ematch without ever hooking up a mic.

While cross-game chat is a non-issue for me, and I couldn't care less if a system has it or not, I do understand that some people like to chat with friends on their gaming console.  I don't really get it, but I accept it.

Achievements and gamer score, on the other hand, are beyond me.   I agree with you there.