Fallen Earth: Vivox at AGDC 2007

POGD.com continued today their coverage from AGDC'07 with an interview with Jennifer Almeida, the Director of Marketing for Vivox, which will provide integrated speech client for upcoming Fallen Earth MMO:

Most of us are familiar with Teamspeak and Ventrilo, which are commonly used by players in online gaming. Vivox is voice software as well, but are they in competition with these two companies?

"Yes and no," says Jennifer, "We provide the SDK to game companies, and they integrate it into the game. So it's not a third-party application. All of the API calls come out to our network, so we are like an ASP."

"We support and manage the communications network," says Jennifer, "But the look and feel of the UI, the dynamics of the communications portal, what's allowed, what's not, how many channels and how the players communicate are dictated by the game or virtual world company."

...Bottom line: I think this is the finest sounding, most diverse and adaptable voice solutions out there. Although Vivox focuses on providing solutions to game developers, they are also working on out-of-game clients as well. These could tie in with instant messenger programs such as AIM and MSN, or can be affiliated with a game client, complete with graphical or audio advertising to help defray costs to the sponsor.