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Wiimote to have mic, VOIP support?

The idea of a mic for the Nintendo Wii controller -- in addition to the speaker they announced at E3 -- isn't too far fetched. After all, the DS is already using such functionality quite successfully, and Nintendo included a microphone with their recent Mario Party games for the GameCube. There's still no official word from Nintendo, but after some careful examination of Nintendo Wii patents, NRevolutionA has spotted some pretty strong hints to a mic. The patent mentions two audio sources, one obviously being the game disc, and the other being a mysterious "audio in" that is hanging out with a pair of audio outputs. It seems like a mic to us. There are also details within the patent regarding the processing of analog audio to digital, and mixing it all together with a bit of Wii magic. Other sources around the interwebs are pushing the rumor of VOIP support, which seems easy enough for Nintendo to do, and matches well with their "always on" Internet strategy. Purists might be scared by the PS3-ish convergence, but Nintendo doesn't seem in any danger of dropping off the deep end in this regard.

[Via Joystiq]