During E3 Nintendo announced some new hardware one of which was WiiSpeak.  It is intended to be released this holiday season.  The first game to utilize this new accessory is Animal Crossing®: City Folk.  This game is a pretty basic looking game, and it looks a lot like any number of Sims games.

Animal Crossing: City Folk
If life were an endless vacation, what would you do? Go fishing, collect shells or watch fireworks with friends? Build a snowman, exchange presents with family or decorate your house for the holidays? Take a trip to the city, go on a shopping spree or visit friends from all over the globe? In Animal Crossing: City Folk, life moves at a relaxed pace, but the world brims with endless possibilities.

•  There’s always something new to do. In the living, breathing world of Animal Crossing: City Folk, days and seasons pass in real time, so there’s always something to discover. Catch fireflies in the summer, go trick-or-treating on Halloween or hunt for eggs on Bunny Day. If you’re in the mood for something a little faster paced, take a bus to a new urban city area that’s unique to Animal Crossing: City Folk. There you can catch a show at the theater or check out the sales at Gracie’s boutique. But if you don’t show your face back home for too long, your neighbors will miss you.
•  Up to four people from your household can live and work together to build the perfect town. Design clothes and patterns, write letters and post messages on the bulletin board for each other, or invite up to three friends to visit your town using Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection. With the new WiiSpeak microphone, it’s like you’re all in the same room. The microphone sits atop the sensor bar and picks up the conversation of everyone in the room to encourage a more inclusive experience.
• Express your personal style. Customize your town, your house and yourself by collecting bugs, fish, fossils, art, furniture, clothes and accessories. You can also go to the salon in the city to change your hairstyle and get a Mii™ makeover. Plus, if you design clothes in the tailor’s shop, animals will wear them and maybe even bring them to other towns.

I’m not too much of a fan of the Animal Crossing series, but to tell the truth I haven’t given it much of a chance.  The game it self didn’t really interest me, but the WiiSpeak accessory got me check the game out it. the game looks like it could be a fairly fun game.

The idea of connecting via Wi-Fi to friends and family, being able to talk to them with the WiiSpeak function sounds pretty cool. From my understanding of how the WiiSpeak works is you hook it up to your Wii via USB, place the reciever on your Sensorbar and it will pick up all of the talking in the room.  I’m also fairly curious if this accessory would work on a computer or on the PS3.

All in all Nintendo keeps  coming up with new accessories for everyone to buy with very few games to use them with.  A couple of examples are the Zapper, and the Wii Balance Board.  That’s not to say they couldn’t make really cool games for those accessories, It’s more that no company has yet.  I would think a good FPS with the Zapper and Balance Board would be awesome, but that would be a big risk for sales.  i.e. the company making said game would have to expect everyone to either have both accessories or to go buy them for that game.