confirmed. also pretty much the only games that require you to use voice chat based on your guidelines, i.e. team cooperation and such, are games with ranked matchmaking in which you cannot choose who you play with. so saying 'i don't play with 12 year olds' is fucking retarded.
it IS a feature. just about everyone in this thread doesn't care that it's not full-time. if you want to talk to your friends while you're all playing seperate games, there's a solution for that. it's called a "phone." or "skype."
EVEN MORE IMPORTANT is what nintendo game are you really looking at playing online in which you would really need to have chat? or that would even make it a better experience? the last thing i'd want added on to smash brothers or mario kart online is the ability for the people i'm playing against to bitch at me through the tv while i play. the flaming culture that voice chat has created far outweighs the good that it's done, and nintendo may not actually know this, but making it restrictively difficult to set up actually does make online gaming safer and more pleasant of an experience, gameplay wise.
"i don't like voice chat because it means other people can harass me when i don't want them to. thus, it would be just as well if it wasn't there at all."
the fact that
can exist and have a quarter million views, and has nearly 5,000 likes, is disgusting. and why everyone here is fine with voice chat ceasing to exist.