Update on Voice Com. competition.
Thought I would update people on what is actually going on with voice gaming in the industry. I will ignore regular telephony, unless someone wants to know something in particular, because that is a *much* longer list.
First of all, we have Fireteam, the first game company to include telephony communication. They announced recently that they will not be producing another game, but instead focus on licensing their technology. Their game was a money loser, btw, despite the critical acclaim. But this means that anyone can license their technology from them if they want it, probably much cheaper than Intel.
fireteam.com
Second we have Roger Wilco. Wilco, as does all the competitors, offers more features and supports more people than Talk N' Play's 3-4 person limit.
rogerwilco.com
Note especially the user comment section - I believe just counting those alone outnumber the number of active Talk N' Play users. Also have gotten more press that Talk N' Play.
Their most relevant development is that they are shipping a working client along with the Baldur's Gate expansion pack. That was the #1 game in February, selling 100s of thousands of copies, so Roger Wilco is going straight to a lot of people who might actually use it, unlike Talk N' Plays lame insertion of their ICQ copy instead of the telephony part on the CGW CDs.
Product is still free - not formally reviewed yet as still in beta.
Again, they actually own their technology, so they can license it.
Third, and probably the favorite, is BattleCom - been around for a while as well and actually is popular (amoung the niche interested in this stuff). They easily win the feature wars and are also fully licensable for inclusion in games - their own technology.
shadowfactor.com
The only thing Talk N' Play had over these others was the PeopleLink functionality. And BattleCom responded with the addition of ICQ, which if you don't know is supported by smaller less relevant ISPs like Compuserve and AOL.
Of note is their fan base and reviews, but of particular interest is that they just ran a contest to design banner ads for them where the only prize was their product + a headset, and they actually have gotten 8 people so far to design ads - in other words more people take the time to do something *for* this company than can be gotten to use Talk n' Play at any one time. Pretty sad.
Again also free (for now)
Oh, but that's just the established players of independent technology - and I didn't mention Intel, which is obvious. Since TMSR is obviously failing to make any sort of volume, I am sure they will lose their exclusive license there as well. And you still can license it for individual games/apps if you want even now.
New entries include Novalogic, who have yet ANOTHER proprietary technology (starting to get the picture of how this is just a commodity feature?) called "Voice - Over - Net" claiming up to *120* people at once. Will be included with F22 Lightning 3 (sequel to best selling simulator in 1996 and 1997) and of course in all their other games as well.
www.novalogic.com for more info.
Oh, let's not stop there. Fly, from Terminal Reality - www.iflytri.com - also has it's own voice com technology. And that means any G.O.D. game will probably include it or license it. And that will lead to MSFT including a modified version of Netmeeting technology for their gaming zone. Terminal Reality finds this technology so trivial that they only mention it as a bullet point in their mag ad.
All of these companies own the *actual* technology, not just an app. This means Talk N' Play's inability to achieve any sort of mass in the large amount of time given them to do so, means they have a dead product on their hands. They are talking about upgrades to a product they won't, and haven't, been able to sell. It looks worse then I, being pessimistic, even imagined. (Originally thought 50,000 - 100,000 sales for a modest revenue boost). To give an idea of how lame they have performed, look at how long since their January announcement and they *still* haven't gotten it in the channel sufficiently. To compare watch how long the Baldur's Gate expansion pack (just went gold last week) takes to get into stores - and Interplay is a company with financial difficulties as well. |
