A Switch Only The Pentagon Could Love
Written: Oct 24 '00 (Updated Oct 24 '00)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Nice design, deep list of options and features.
Cons: Everything else. Substantial hardware and software compatibility problems, only works through MSN Messenger service, horrid headset audio quality, poor speech recognition, overpriced and most of the features are overkill.
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| Brian_Igo's Full Review: Microsoft Sidewinder Game Voice |
For being led by the best and brightest of a generation, computer and software makers sometimes make me wonder if they actually use this stuff?
It's a frequent question for most users. For years, my favorite example has been needing to get behind the computer every time I wanted to use a headset. Has anyone at, say, Intel ever used a set of headphones? How hard would it be to make a headphone circuit on the motherboard a standard, and for case makers to drop an extra fifty cents on screwing a mini-jack into the front of the case? Maybe that's too much to ask. (Look how long we've been choked with 16 IRQ's just because no one could be bothered to revise the standard.) But I don't think it would take a rocket scientist to include a switchblock when you buy a new set of headphones so you could switch between speakers and headphones, nor do I think you'd have to be Bill Gates to afford this little piece of equipment.
But it did take Bill Gates to figure this out. In typical Microsoft fashion, the Game Voice isn't just a switch. It's a telecommunication devise that gives you several options in deciding who you want to talk to. It is also buggy, overpriced at $50, needlessly welded to other parts of the Microsoft empire and straddled with new things to make me say "Huh?"
The Hardware:
The heart of the Game Voice is the conch-shaped controller. It's a nice ergonomic design, with control buttons that are well placed and easily memorized. All of the chat buttons are arrayed within a hockey-sized puck circle, with a small volume dial on the left side and a large button for issuing in-game voice commands to your program. On the side at the top of the controller is the switch to choose between headphone and speaker use. (Insert wild cheering.wav here) It is set away from the command buttons so not to be hit by mistake during the heat of battle, a thoughtful touch. The receiving jacks for the headset mic and speaker leads is at the top on the right side.
The Game Voice gives you a dizzying array of chat options. Under your fingers are four numbered buttons to talk to individuals or groups you have selected in any combination you choose. At the bottom of the circle of chat buttons is a button to talk to everyone you have selected on your team, and an All button to broadcast to everyone in the chat. Through the software controls you can add and delete members of your team on the fly, and holding down any of the buttons will activate a computer-voiced reading of the list of everyone assigned to that channel incase it gets confusing.
A midrange Plantronics headset is included with the Game Voice. While light and relatively comfortable, the headphone half of the equation is suitable for online chat and radio listening only. Game audio and music from MP3's or CD's is on par with a cheap set of Walkman headphones. The Game Voice would be a better product if Microsoft either pushed the price up and included a decent headset, or skipped including a headset and dropped the price below $40. Either would have been a better solution that choosing these tin cans and a string. Even if everything else worked perfectly, the Game Voice would only get a four-star rating because of the awful sound quality of the Plantronics.
But everything else does not go perfectly.
Installation:
For being such a straightforward piece of equipment, the Game Voice comes with a long list of compatibility "issues". Fortunately, the thick manual spells these out. Unfortunately, you have to buy it to know what they are. In a move that makes me wonder if Microsoft has heard that the government doesn't think much of it's business practices, the system requirements on the box doesn't cover any of the compatibility requirements.
Okay, it does say you have to have Windows 98 or later, but when a Microsoft peripheral isn't compatible with any Microsoft OS, that should be in bold print. Even if you have a late version of Win95 that includes USB support, Game Voice will not work.
You also need Direct X 8. And that's a major problem because we're still on Direct X 7. This has created issues with using Game Voice with Windows 98 and 98SE. There is a patch on the Game Voice website for these two OS's, but Win2K users are SOL until the full release of Direct X 8 arrives this winter.
If you have USB speakers you cannot use the Game Voice. (You shouldn't use USB speakers anyway because they are huge system resource hogs, but a Microsoft headset unit being totally incompatible with the Microsoft USB speaker system is funny-as long as you don't have them.) The Game Voice also can't turn off the rear speakers in a four channel system like the high end systems from Altec, Creative and Klipsch. The selector function also doesn't work if your speakers are powered through the sound card.
Speaking of which, there is a whole list of sound cards the Game Voice doesn't like because the sound card has to be able to process voice imput and audio output simultaneously. The good news is most cards released in the last two years have this full-duplex capability. But some popular cards still in wide service like the Diamond MX300 do not.
Once you get past this, there are games that don't work or don't work well with the Game Voice software. And the list reads like the bestseller chart for the last two years: Rainbow Six, Half-Life, Quake II, Quake III, Unreal Tournament, Ultima Online, Mech Commander, Baldur's Gate, Everquest, Diablo 2, Delta Force 2 and the most recent Jane's flight sim titles.
Oy.
If you pass all these "issues", installation of the Game Voice is as easy as laying a $50 bill on the craps table. Picking it back up is something else.
"Check, check-one, two..check:"
Using the Game Voice doesn't do much to redeem it. To use the Game Voice as anything more than a speaker/headset switch you have to use the MSN Messenger service, it will not work with ICQ or AOL Messenger. And to use all the functions of the Game Voice, the person you are chatting with needs to be using a Game Voice, too, or talking on their computer through the limited-use free version of the Game Voice software. Aside from being incompatible with two chat services with millions more users than MSN, the restrictions within games not-too subtly steer you to the online game forum where you are most likely to find anyone with the same toy: the (ta-da) MSN Game Zone.
Having a fat pipe to the web is a good idea, too. This isn't unique to the Game Voice, but trying to send game and voice data over a dial up connection is begging for hurt. Gamevoice does include voice compression software to improve things, but there is only so much you can do with 56k.
I tried to give the Game Voice a run to check out its features. But for the kind of games I play (flight and racing sims) there isn't much calling for the multichannel capabilities. And if there were I'm not so good at dogfighting to juggle between the buttons to talk and line up my shot.
And that is the biggest problem with using the Game Voice for what Microsoft designed it to do. When I get in the mood for a Quake III fragfest the last thing I have on my mind is taking my hands off the keyboard to talk to this or that person. Fragging is never more fun than at a LAN party when you can throw smack across the room after turning someone into a ball of fine red mist. But if that's what Game Voice does best why not only have an All or Team button so you can stay true to the Keep It Simple, Stupid rule? I suspect the most distinctive features of the Game Voice will remain unused. Action in any online game this side of golf is too frantic to waste time reassigning team members and talking to this group but not that one.
Using voice commands within a game could have gone far in redeeming the system. If you've ever spent time with a hardcore flight sim like Falcon 4.0, being able to execute voice commands instead of searching out the right keyboard command is a godsend. Setting up commands and a profile is easy, and using Game Voice is as easy as opening the correct profile, starting the game and making sure the green Command light on the conch is lit when you want to get something done. But the voice recognition is mediocre at best even in Microsoft's Combat Flight Simulator 2. Commands happened without prompting and were delayed enough to even render correct actions useless. I also noted a hit in the framerate just before the program did execute a command. At least in the games I like to play the promise of voice command is largely that. And with Game Voice is is a promise unfulfilled.
But It Could Be Brilliant If...
Strangely, the best application I can think of for the Game Voice has nothing to do with games. Looking at the ability to assign people to channels and to selectively speak to them, I immediately thought that the Game Voice would be wonderful to have in online group audio conferences, or to use a LAN in place of a telephone intercom system between workstations or locations if your company has the bandwidth for it. The more I think about it, the more perfect it seems for this environment. Talking your IS or CIO into buying cases of anything with the word Sidewinder on it might be a job in itself. But if you use internet teleconferencing the Game Voice is well worth consideration.
However, for the job Microsoft intended the Game Voice to do, it is a near-total failure. Game Commander and Roger Wilco are less expensive and work much better in every way.
Unless, of course, crawling behind the computer to plug in your headphones was driving you mad. I keep telling myself that while $50 for a simple switch might be as insane as a $300 military toilet seat, it's a small price to pay for keeping my sanity.
Did I mention the switch works beautifully?
-Brian Igo
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 50
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Member: Brian Igo
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