http://wii.ign.com/articles/890/890133p1.html

July 15, 2008 - At the Electronic Entertainment Expo 2008 this week, Nintendo announced WiiSpeak, a wired USB microphone designed to rest in the front of your media room. WiiSpeak will enable multiplayer voice-chat for Wii owners, which is big news. The first title to take advantage of the microphone will be Animal Crossing: City Folk, a game that allows for four-player Wi-Fi Connection play. Interestingly, though, WiiSpeak will not come packaged with Animal Crossing, an oddity given that Wii Sports Resort will ship with the newly announced MotionPlus attachment. So the question is, why won't WiiSpeak be a bundle, too?

In all honesty, it's just in relation to cost," Shigeru Miyamoto explained. "I'm sure there are plenty of people out there who want to play Animal Crossing over Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection. Maybe just as it is. There may be some people who want to use a USB keyboard to chat and we're fine with that. And there may be others who want to use something like WiiSpeak. So just from a cost perspective and being able to provide the game to everybody, we thought that was the best way to go."

When asked if players unconvinced of the WiiSpeak peripheral could alternatively use a third-party headset, Miyamoto suggested that Nintendo's device satisfy skeptics.

"Basically, our idea with WiiSpeak is rather than to just provide a voice-chat function, we want to really connect living rooms to each other. In that sense, the microphone in WiiSpeak is really designed to be able to clearly capture many different voices being spoken in a room at the same time and convey that over the Internet. It's a very capable microphone and it's designed with that intent. And so that's why WiiSpeak has taken on the form that it has," he said.

But what if you place WiiSpeak on your center speaker? Will it pick up lots of background noise. When asked, MIyamoto shrugged off the potential issue.

"Actually, that functionality is also very good and that's probably what's contributing to the cost of it," he noted, laughing.

I'm quite interesting in WiiSpeak, and exactly what they do with it...

Will old games use it? Like SSBB, or MKWII?

Yeah, can we talk in SSBB and MK Wii? Also, will it pick up on background noise in bigger rooms? Do you have to scream in bigger rooms to be heard?

Hmm, I first thought it was some kind of headset, but it's actually a mic you put up on top of your tv... wonder how that'll work with all the people speaking, background noises and of course sounds and music from the game you're playing..

Well, at least it really VERY tiny. :p I doesn't come across in the pic showing just the device, but here it's quite visible just how tiny the thing actually is:

It actually sits on top of the sensor bar. :)