Nintendo thinks GameChat will be used to play games in ways it 'never imagined'

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Nintendo announced GameChat when it officially unveiled the Switch 2 in a dedicated Nintendo Direct. GameChat is one of the many features coming with the new console, enabling players to speak to each other over Nintendo's Switch Online service.

GameChat is such a prominent feature on the Switch 2 that it has received its own dedicated button on the face of the console, located under the home button and labeled "C." Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa recently spoke to investors about the new feature and said that it will "inspire consumers to play games in new ways that we never imagined."

While we can't say for certain if gamers will be playing games in ways that Nintendo has "never imagined" until the Switch 2 launches on June 5th, what we can say is that Discord has been around for many years now, and has become such a prominent piece of software that the company behind it has been valued at an estimated $15 billion.

Judging by the Nintendo president's statement, Nintendo has never heard about gamers using Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services such as Discord, TeamSpeak, or even voice chat services built into games such as Overwatch or Counter-Strike. I highly doubt Nintendo has never heard of these services, which means we can boil down this statement by Nintendo's president as over-the-top assurances to investors for a new Switch 2 feature that has been more than established on competing platforms for at the very least, the past 5 years.

"We developed GameChat with the goal of recreating that childhood experience of kids getting together with their gaming systems, but in the modern environment. You may have experienced getting together to play the same game, or just being together in the same place while playing different games.

By using the features of Nintendo Switch 2, we can recreate that experience not only with offline local multiplayer gameplay, but online as well. You can experience GameChat not only with Nintendo Switch 2 titles, but also with Nintendo Switch titles. We hope that GameChat adds new value to software and inspires consumers to play games in new ways that we never imagined," said Furukawa