Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Vivox, Electronic Arts partner on voice capability in gaming

By Galen Moore

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Vivox Inc. has signed a partnership with video game publisher Electronic Arts Inc. (Nasdaq: ERTS), the company reports. Natick-based Vivox will provide voice software for the electronic arts game Command and Conquer 4, executives of the company said, adding that Command and Conquer is the first of several collaborations that Vivox and Electronic Arts plan to announce.

Vivox already provides voice capability for Sony Online Entertainment games, including EverQuest, and NCsoft games such as Lineage, City of Heroes, Guild Wars and Richard Garriott’s Tabula Rasa.

In addition, the company plans to issue a press release today announcing the launch earlier this month of a Facebook application, Vivox Web Voice for Facebook, that enables users of the online social network to chat using voice.

The application was created using an open application programming interface for developers, which is now in beta. Vivox’s open API has also been used to create a website that supports pickup groups for the massively multiplayer online game World of Warcraft.

“The biggest thing for us is bringing voice to the Web — whether it’s Facebook or other places, there’s just immense potential,” said a Vivox CEO Rob Seaver. “The voice brings a level of high value social interaction.”

Vivox joins several existing voice apps for Facebook, but Seaver said he believes the Vivox app is the first to take advantage of the full social potential that Facebook has to offer.

So far, Vivox is taking $13.8 million over two rounds from venture investors including Benchmark Capital, Canaan Partners and GrandBanks Capital. The company has 15 million users at the current quarter of 2009 — up from 9 million at the beginning of the year — and grew accounts 800 percent in 2008 over 2007, Seaver said. He declined to discuss revenue or the company’s road to profitability.