Alcatel-Lucent and Vivox transform online gaming by integrating real-time voice into the game world

Alcatel-Lucent and Vivox transform online gaming by integrating real-time voice into the game world

Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU)and Vivox today announced a collaborative effort to deliver real-time audio to Vivox’s leading global online gaming customers via Alcatel-Lucent’s OmniTouch Advanced Communications Server (ACS), the same underlying server that supports OmniTouch My Teamwork. This powerful, SIP-based server provides a scalable and robust communications platform to support tens of thousands of users within the Vivox Massively Multiplayer Online Gaming (MMOG) community with high-quality voice interaction.

Vivox chose the Alcatel-Lucent solution to help transform their virtual gaming experience for players, raising it to a higher level. The addition of voice communications reflects a real-time physical world where players interact with each other in a natural and expressive way. Previously, communication vehicles like email and IM were used, but limited the playing experience, especially in games with a social structure.

With the Alcatel-Lucent OmniTouch ACS solution, Vivox immerses voice within the game and brings MMOGs to the next level. Players remain “inside” the game to communicate and the result is a high-quality, realistic experience for players, with voice technology finally matching the superior graphics and complex storylines typical of MMOGs.

Vivox also realized significant business and operational benefits with the deployment of the OmniTouch ACS platform. It is open, easily extensible and offers industry-standard XML and SIP-based APIs (Application Programming Interface) that support the rapid creation of multimedia Internet-enabled applications. By taking advantage of the customized voice and functional interface capabilities inherent in OmniTouch ACS , Vivox reduced its time to market, offering a fully featured voice application in 10 months.

Due to its deployment flexibility, reliability and scalability, OmniTouch ACS is well suited to support large online communities, scaling from ten to thousands of users and easily accommodating the rapid growth of player populations. Its distributed architecture and multi-tenancy capability allow Vivox to supportmultiple games and communities around the world. Currently, Vivox supports over one million users in 180 countries, including players of the MMOG EVE Online from CCP Games. In addition, the entirely software and standards-based solution—which eliminates specialized hardware—is a cost-effective solution for both Vivox and their customers.

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