Although, now I am curious if I’ve just been ‘lucky’ in my online experiences. To preface, know that I am awful awful awful at FPS stuff. I’ll play it, but I certainly won’t ever win. I can count on two hands, at most, times that I have gotten verbally abusive treatment from randoms online. In fact, the reason why I almost exclusively play with friends is because the randoms don’t seem to talk much at all and thus, don’t coordinate, so I end up lone-wolfing just like everyone else is doing. Might as well be playing with bots at that point.

I know there is negativity on voice chat in games, but I think its presence way overblown. However, that is based solely on my own experience, and does not represent the whole of the data. For Amano to make this move seems like letting old grudges get in the way of good decision making.

Agreed. I’d like to see a Star Ocean game that I want to play (although this isn’t terribly likely, perhaps).