Specific Requirements

OS requirement

First, you'll notice that you have to have Windows 98 or a later operating system. I doubt this will be a problem, but we only tested the Game Voice in Windows 98, Windows 2000, and Windows Millennium Edition (ME). I only mention this because there were a select band of rebels back in the day that refused to move to Windows from DOS.

A free USB port

Besides the obligatory microphone and line out jacks, the controller base also plugs into a USB port. I can see this being problematic for some people who may have more than 2 USB devices. Hopefully those of you who fall into this category either have a USB device that allows you to plug in another USB device ("daisy-chaining"), or have a USB hub lying around somewhere.

TCP/IP LAN or Internet connection

This requirement is not difficult, but I wanted to mention that using the voice-over-IP chat technology obviously requires some bandwidth. Like anything related to multiplayer gaming, the fatter the bandwidth pipe is to your computer, the better. There is an option, that I'll discuss a little later, within the Game Voice software to change the compression rate at which your voice is streamed out and the other players' voices are received by your computer.

Sound card with full-duplex chipset

What is a full-duplex chip set? Full-duplex sound is simply the capability for a sound card to record and playback audio data at the same time. This is a hard requirement in order to use the Game Voice and other Internet voice-over-IP type technologies. The good part of this is that sound cards have been full duplex for a few product generations, so there should be no problem here.

DirectX 8 API or later

A lot of games do not share audio with other applications. Because of this, audio will shut out on other applications while playing the game. DirectX 8, due out at the end of the year, addresses this problem for Windows 2000 users. In the meantime, there is no fix for Windows 2000 users. For Windows 98 users, there is a DirectSound Update available for download, which patches DirectX 7.0 or 7.0a and fixes the audio-sharing issue. Windows ME users don't need the patch.