Duders, I am surprised I can't find a definitive answer to this (maybe I missed it?) but I just got a Wii U. I have friends that I planned to play with, knowing we could only chat in the pre-game lobby. However, we STILL cant hear each other in pre-game. Is there a setting I'm missing? I know to press the 'minus' button on the gamepad to activate chat. Are we just having weird connection troubles??

Any info would be great! And sorry if this has been answered I didn't see another thread.

If there isn't a way to get that to work, bypass the in-game chat completely and set up a free Discord server on your phones or PCs. Better voice quality, persistence, text messaging, and it's all free and even works in a web browser.

@nickhead: In the pre-game lobby, you should be able to chat with each other. It may have to be a private game or something, where it's only your friends and bots. If you're in a public lobby that you happen to be in with 1-3 friends or whatever, I'm not sure the game knows how to open up voice chat only for part of the lobby at once. I forget.

I remember it being pretty straightforward as long as everybody was on everybody else's friends list. I don't think you have to do anything in options or whatever, because the game really has no "party options or anything. Also, I believe you have to turn up the volume on the Gamepad speaker, because I think the voice chat audio only goes in the Gamepad mic and comes out the Gamepad speakers and doesn't use your TV speakers in any way.

For these many reasons and more, I mostly just turn on Skype on my phone or laptop while playing Wii U, and try to adjust game volume to a suitable level that I can hear all of it, more or less.

I'M USING MOTION CONTROLS!

@mike@bisonhero Yeah, we had a private match set up and we're friends through the Wii, etc. I also assumed I needed the gamepad volume up but still, no voice came through. Who knows. Thanks for the responses though. This is a super specific situation for my one buddy where his Wii U just barely works over his internet connection already and he doesn't have a PC/laptop available, nor good phone service. I had suggested doing a google hangout or skype but unfortunately those aren't options here. Frustrating!