Vivox is planning to open up its platform to third party developers. Vivox provides a VoIP platform for developers of online games and virtual worlds. The first round of apps that the company expects from its developer partners include wide ranging features from lip sync to natural language speech recognition and response. There is also interest among developers in porting the code to different mobile platforms to enable users to connect to their communities from multiple devices.
Vivox provides voice services to a number of games and virtual worlds including CCP Games (Eve Online), Linden Lab, Sony Online Entertainment (Everquest, Everquest II & Star wars Galaxies), Wizards of the Coast, Multiverse, NCsoft and K2 Network. As the network provider to these companies, Vivox serves over 5 million users. Currently the company offers premium services that are often sold directly to end users and include things like voice fonts which give players the ability to morph their voice to match their avatar, i.e. an elf.
The company has developed a number of methods for monetizing offerings - from subscription, micro-transaction or advertising supported.
Another premium service from Vivox grants players the ability to dial in to a world using a regular phone. And there are other features that extend the communication reach. Vivox is proactively exploring interest among developers to bring new features and applications to this market of users.
The APIs Vivox will be making public for developers will be Vivox’s native API set.