NCSoft and Vivox Partner For High-Quality Voice

[lyankyj]

source: NCSoft + Vivox = Voice to the players | News

FRAMINGHAM, Mass. — May 13, 2008 — NCsoft Corp. and Vivox today announced a partnership to bring high-quality, full featured voice to the NCsoft player community.

Through this partnership, the NCsoft player community will enjoy market-leading voice chat from Vivox. Players will have the ability to communicate with scalable, full featured voice within and across NCsoft games via an NCsoft branded game communication portal. Vivox will also deliver advanced features such as voice fonts, voice mail and in-and-out of game communication via regular phones and text messages.

"Voice is a significant feature for the ongoing development of the NCsoft community," said Peter Jarvis, vice president of operations at NCsoft North America. "By partnering with Vivox, we will be able to offer our players a commanding set of communication tools that will simplify communications amongst the player base with far reaching options. Vivox is the clear leader in quality, features and operational excellence and we anticipate a successful integration and long-term relationship."

"NCsoft is an industry leader in the advancement of gameplay and engagement of the player community," said Rob Seaver, CEO of Vivox. "They recognize the power of a communication solution that is open to all players and lets them communicate effectively and reliably. Vivox is gratified in this collaboration and we look forward to contributing to the advancement of the NCsoft community."

Voice-mail, phone, text-messages! - 'though im guessing the last two are only apply for US

[Cylicon]

well that sounds like good news hehehe

[Riku]

Thank you lyankyj for the onfo, GG.

[zeeZ]

CCP (EVE Online) and Vivox teamed up before. While the sound quality is ok, they initially wanted to offer the Vivox stuff with a fee, but somehow ended up offering this service for free.

I wonder what their plans are for Aion, fee or free?

[Kaldur]

If they are just making a partnership to screw customers with a hidden fee, I will just refuse to use it. That's why we have Ventrilo.

[zeeZ]

I highly doubt that the "communication via regular phones and text messages" bit won't come with a fee.

$10 for a full year of EVE Voice where their plans IIRC

[Calindor]

cool. It would be cool to have familiar voices. I remember all the voices in the MMO Earth and Beyond we're done by celebrities...like the guy who does the voice for bender, some girl on Firefly, and someone from Farscape, along with many others.

[ei8th]

Originally Posted by Calindor

cool. It would be cool to have familiar voices. I remember all the voices in the MMO Earth and Beyond we're done by celebrities...like the guy who does the voice for bender, some girl on Firefly, and someone from Farscape, along with many others.

I'm not sure this is at all about voiceovers ^^

[Zinrae]

Thanks for posting this

It still doesn't really say how they plan to use it (or if it will be in Aion). Guess we'll just have to wait to find out .

[Tareith]

Thanks for the info, sounds interesting but we'll see how it actually gets used.

[Terpsichore]

Typing is better, winamp> ventrilo.

[zeeZ]

Originally Posted by Terpsichore

winamp > ventrilo.

I didn't know you could voice chat over winamp now, cool. Where'd you get that plugin?

[[PhiberOpticks]]

It sounds more and more like this project will be a PlayOnline killer. And it sounds much better already.

@zeeZ: I believe he's saying that he would rather listen to music than other people.

[zeeZ]

Oh yeah, and here's the source's source
Vivox: The Voice of Virtual Worlds – Integrated Voice Chat for Online Games - Press Releases

I would rather listen to music than to other people too sometimes, but it's pretty hard to organize time critical stuff via text messages while kiting someone and attacking someone else. You can't win a war with carrior pigeons these days.

[Zanny]

Lets hope they make sure to keep this voice chat mostly segregated from in game activities, thats why WoW voice chat failed miseribly, its too hard to get someone in your channel to talk to, and then they didnt implement the voice protocols well at all.