Icarus and Vivox Partnership to Bring Five New Clients

Vivox, a provider of voice integration for virtual worlds, announced yesterday that they would integrate the Vivox Precision Studio with the Icarus Developer Tools Suite. Icarus Studios was the first studio to design a toolkit from scratch to meet the unique needs of virtual worlds developers. The partnership has already brought in three new undisclosed clients with two more in the works, all Fortune 100 companies, David Gardner, Executive Vice President of Icarus, tells VirtualWorldsNews.com.

"I'll try to be vague, but as an example, look at the way they’re using Vivox in virtual tourism," he said. "Say we replicate a city, at any point or time in the world. You can contract with a tour guide and his avatar can walk your avatar around the city, and he can point at things and sync the real-world data with what you're looking at. And we've integrated best-of-class lip-synch technology, so with Vivox you get a full 3D sound experience in a personal one-on-one tour with an expert in that city’s history. In some virtual worlds, they’re looking at virtual radio. And you can tune into that channel and hear their broadcast. Others are neat things like if someone gets up on a podium, suddenly the range of their voice is extended. You can whisper to someone next to you, or if you’re in a class and teaching and want to break it up into subsections to work individually and then bring it back together, these are the challenges." 

Vivox previously partnered with BigWorld Technology to integrate its voice technology into the BigWorld Technology Suite. When asked about the differences in the partnership, Monty Sharma, Vice President Product Management and Marketing for Vivox, says it's pulling them into the virtual world space.

"Icarus has gone more aggressively at the virtual worlds market," he said. "We’re learning a lot with the worlds we integrate with. People have learned how to communicate face to face and on the phone since we were kids, but now in these virtual worlds, you need to bring in more information and tools to allow people to communicate in a reasonable way. The more time we spend on virtual worlds, the more ideas and technologies are coming out to make it more natural."

The two companies began their partnership with Fallen Earth, an upcoming post-apocalyptic MMOG from Icarus Studios.

Press release below.

Vivox Voice Solution Now Integrated with the Icarus Studios Developer Tools Suite

Framingham, MA – June 5, 2007

Vivox, the leading provider of integrated voice services for online games and virtual worlds, today announced the integration of the Vivox Precision Studio™ with the Icarus Developer Tools Suite.

A unique network architecture and powerful suite of administrative tools creates the foundation of the Icarus platform. Designed from the ground up for massive scaling, maximum hardware utilization, and full redundancy, the platform provides all of the common and next-generation administration and customer support tools required to run an online network. This platform will dramatically reduce the costs associated with scaling to make a successful online environment.

The Vivox Precision Studio SDK is now offered as embedded technology within the Icarus Developer Tool Suite, offering online virtual world developers a full-featured voice solution with the proven ability to deliver voice on a massive scale. Multiple options exposed through robust APIs ensure that voice may be deployed by platform licensees in ways that best match their unique world, social structure, and communication style of residents. In addition to high quality, SIP-standard voice, available features will include voice fonts, virtual-to-real-world voice calls and SMS.

Vivox communication services are professionally hosted and managed and tightly integrated into the online world, with a user interface that is controlled by the developer. All players communicate clearly and naturally on persistent or dynamically created voice channels with full server-side mixing that eliminates demand on the game servers and minimizes local CPU impact.

"Virtual worlds are complex, three dimensional realms that are increasingly mirroring the real world," said Rob Seaver, CEO of Vivox. "The Icarus Developer Tools Suite is an excellent example of Icarus Studios' commitment to furthering online world development and enhancing players' experiences. We are very happy to be working with Icarus Studios again to deliver a simple to integrate, scalable communication solution to developers that provides them with the freedom to add premium features easily."

"We are pleased to expand our partnership with Vivox beyond Fallen Earth " said Jim Hettinger, CEO of Icarus Studios. "Our objective is to blur the lines between the real world and online virtual worlds. By incorporating Vivox's best of breed technology and service with the Icarus Developer Tools Suite, we're offering an immersive communications solution that will bring the two worlds closer together. By enabling other developers to quickly add Vivox's superior VoIP features with minimal development effort, our customers will be able to deliver feature-rich voice services tailored specifically to their world that exceed expectations with the full support of Vivox's team of communication experts."

The Icarus Developer Tool Suite with Vivox Precision Studio is available for immediate integration. For more information please visit www.icarusstudios.com.

About Vivox, Inc.
Vivox provides online games, virtual worlds, and online communities with managed voice communication services that are simple to integrate and enhance game play and community. Vivox's carrier-grade, customizable solutions help online games and communities create improved offerings and extend their user base. Today, Vivox is bringing voice to approximately one million subscribers in more than 180 countries. For more information visit www.vivox.com.

About Icarus Studios
Icarus Studios is focused on helping our clients launch online virtual worlds, MMOGs, simulators and 3D collaborative and educational products. We enable our client's vision with our unique combination of next generation technology and services, making Icarus a comprehensive resource center for those tasked with quickly creating all or components of these initiatives. From complete project development, platform and tool licensing to studio services and library resources, Icarus will work within our client's time and budget constraints to quickly create a quality product that meets their objectives.