Our recent review of Splatoon 2 wasn't able to test Nintendo's unorthodox new voice-chat app for the Nintendo Switch, which requires a separate smartphone to let you talk to your teammates during a match. That app launched on the iOS and Android app stores today, and while we'll have a full review after more extensive testing, we wanted to point out one baffling design decision immediately.

As Nintendo points out in the app's official FAQ, voice chat cannot run in the background while using your phone for other purposes such as "texts, social media, etc.":

The voice chat will disconnect while you're talking on the phone or using another application, but your voice chat will restart in the same room once you open the Nintendo Switch Online application again as long as the game session is still ongoing.

What's more, early testing confirms that the app won't work if your phone goes into power-saving "sleep mode," with the screen inactive. And don't bother trying to use the app to chat with your Switch friends while away from the system, either: you can only join chat rooms with people when you're actively playing a specific, supported game with them.

This is all in sharp contrast to Sony and Microsoft, which have allowed simple party chat directly on their consoles—across games and at the system level—for years.

A long line of baffling decisions

This might not seem like a very big deal in practice—after all, if you're chatting with teammates during a match, you're probably not actively using other apps on your phone or turning it off. If you want to switch away to check an e-mail, text message, or Twitter thread between matches or respawns, though, be prepared to temporarily lose your voice connection to fellow players in the lobby while you do.

Practical impact aside, the design decision is simply baffling when you compare the Switch voice chat app to other phone-based chat solutions. Everything from Skype to Discord to the built-in phone app on your smartphone lets you continue talking to others while doing other things with the phone. For Nintendo to require its app to run in the foreground when other apps prove it's not necessary is just strange.

Then again, requiring a separate smartphone for in-game voice chat was a strange decision in the first place. Even the Wii U allowed direct in-game voice chat , though that solution only worked on select titles and only with external headsets and not through the system's built-in microphone and speakers.

On the Switch, if you want to hear game audio and chat audio through one set of headphones, you'll need a cumbersome splitter that can handle audio from both sources at once. Not exactly a streamlined solution for high-end players.

In a January interview with Wired, Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime said that "instead of having some sort of bulky gamer headset, you’ll be able to do it right off your smartphone, put in your earbuds that you use for your standard mobile device. We think that’s a pretty sweet solution." That's not awful spin, as far as it goes—more players probably have a smartphone than have a dedicated gaming headset, and offloading the voice chat functions means the Switch's low-powered hardware isn't additionally taxed. What's more, including the tech necessary for a microphone/headset plug-in in the already cramped Joy-Con housing would add a bit more to hardware costs for the expensive controllers.

But if Nintendo wants to offload these voice chat functions to smartphones, the least it could do is make an app that is as good as the existing smartphone voice chat alternatives. Hopefully Nintendo can improve and streamline its voice chat app experience a little bit by the time it starts charging for the Switch's online gameplay next year.