Quality headsets worth the few bucks

If you’re a PC gamer, you probably have one collection of hardware you use a lot: your mouse, your keyboard, your speakers and, now, your headset.

Most online PC games these days have voice support or work with programs such as Ventrilo or Teamspeak to allow you to chat with the people you game with.

But most folks’ headsets are afterthoughts at best.

They’re leftovers from their video game console or something that came shipped with their PC, or even that horrible microphone that’s built in to some monitors.

Those folks should upgrade immediately.

For less than $20, you can get a comfortable, quality headset that sounds and records well.

I tested the Audio 70, a basic Plantronics headset that uses the microphone and speaker plugs on your PC.

It has a nice long cord, in case those plugs are on the back of the machine, and has an in-cable control for volume and muting.

It features a behind-the-neck style of bracket to connect the ear pieces, which are comfortable and adjustable. The sound quality was crisp and clear, and the microphone sounded clear as well.

All told, it’s a pretty terrific value for $20 or less on the street.

Voice-recognition commands

So headsets can help you talk with other games over your console or PC. But what about talking to your console or PC?

Fonix Speech will be giving its voice-recognition technology to Xbox 360 developers so games can recognize the commands you give over the headset.

So far, several big names have taken the opportunity, including Ubisoft and Vivendi Universal.

We’ve seen games in the past that included some basic voice commands, but they were built from scratch by the game developers.

What Fonix offers is a set of tools that all developers could use to create voice support.

To put it another way: In case gaming didn’t make you look geeky enough, Xbox 360 owners now will start talking back to their televisions.

Talk of Ubisoft sale unsettling

Rumors continue to abound that Ubisoft, one of my favorite game developers, will be bought out by one of the huge publishing houses like Electronic Arts or Vivendi.

That would be a sad day for the studio, which has managed to maintain its high quality while starting new franchises. It’s one of the few publishers whose slate usually includes something that does not have a sequel number in the title.

‘Guild Wars’ seizes market

NCSoft knows online world games. Its innovative “Auto Assault” driving game – due late this year – caught many eyes at the recent Electronic Entertainment Expo trade conference. But it’s “Guild Wars,” the online fantasy and player-versus- player title, that caught your dollars. It once again landed at No. 1 on NPD Group’s weekly tally of PC game sales, this time for the week of May 15-21.

“Guild Wars” was followed by “The Sims 2 University Expansion Pack,” “World of Warcraft” (which has been in the Top 3 for six months now) and “The Sims 2.” “Sims” titles and shooters dominated most of the list.

One surprise was “Lego Star Wars,” which held a healthy No. 6 position. Who says people don’t want to play as Darth Vader made out of Lego blocks?