I think the game would be better with voice chat and an option to mute. Most headsets have separate volume controls for game audio and chat anyway, don't they? It seems a little bit overkill to take out chat all-together just to avoid the possibility of online negativity. If this was one of the key reasons that chat was not implemented, what would the other ones be?

Oh Nintendo, I wish you didn't have so many damn fanboys. Then you would fall hard and be forced change your stupid ways, maybe then we could finally see some brilliance from thee.

While the lack of VC is a bit of a hindrance, I def get where they`re coming from. I hate that group of people whose mouths just spout horrible things to their teammates or other players. I find them really annoying and sort of ruin the game for me. I think they should explore a different way to combat this toxicity of voice chat in the future, but I think this is fine for now.

Lazy Devs.They could simply add mute or allow you to play without voice chat.

Good, last thing I want to hear is a bunch of kids screaming over the speakers. And let's be honest, how many parents ACTUALLY use parental controls for their kids? Little to none. This decision doesn't affect me one bit since nearly everyone uses Skype with friends anyways when it comes to Nintendo games. Plus, the gamepad's microphone sucks.

Because in Mario Kart there isn't any significant info you can provide other players with. And why would you do such a thing? Everybody else are your rivals.

However in a team game like Splatoon if you're playing with random people on your team against a team of friends you'd be at a disadvantageous situation if friend voice chat was allowed.

I run a headset from the gamepad... I have parental controls set on my Wii U ... but i won't miss the chatter of children

You'd think so. But maybe Nintendo prefer their own approach.

I'm getting this the day I get my wii u and I will silently skeet all over the walls.

I almost never used voice chat when I played Call of Duty and Gears of War on the 360 so no biggie. If I really want to with friends though, I'll just get on Skype.