VoIP Gaming

1. Playing games with VoIP
   While the giants of the telecom industry scramble to stake a claim on the nascent market for making phone calls over the Internet, Microsoft and Sony have already discovered the first breakthrough application: talking smack to other virtual commandos. Online services for Microsoft's Xbox game console and Sony's PlayStation 2 have created the first major consumer application for voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service enabling thousands of hours of daily chat for online combatants. While a far cry from the business and home installations seen as the major market for VoIP services, online gaming is providing valuable early clues about how to deliver such services cheaply and effectively enough to entice consumers.
                          
2. VoIP Games
   Games that let you talk to other people through the internet. While not primarily designed for voice communications many games now provide voice communications through the internet. Some portable games provide Wi-Fi VoIP. These devices are positioning themselves to drive adoption among the increasingly connected younger gaming audience. The voice capabilities also could allow gamers to chat with one another over the Internet while playing. … DS users will be able to connect with a local wireless network… EEE 802.11 …" provides for a wireless LAN connection … A plug for headphones transmits stereo sound." Used with a headset this could enable phone calls from network hotspots.  
              
3. Poker game with VoIP capability
   PokerWize.com is launching the world's first virtual reality, 3D and Voice Chat enabled poker game this summer. Combing VoIP with video gaming technology means that players across the world will be able to interact with voice whilst playing poker online. Online alter egos will be fully customisable, with skin, hair and eye colour as well as clothing to be chosen by each player. Even body language and facial expression can be altered to bluff opponents. PokerWize.com is also offering users a free, interactive, 3D tutorial given by Helen Chamberlain, worth £80. No poker game would be worth playing without real money, so a unique lobby design will help each user find the right game and table. The virtual game also gives you hints and tips up to your level to help you decide your next move.
              
4. Free VoIP enhances gaming
   Recent multiplayer games already support in-game VoIP for communicating between gaming peers. This article talks about VoIP in gaming in a wider scope, yet seems to not be aware that this is already a fact. VoIP is nothing peculiar, and has existed for over 10 years. Yet, not until now has Internet and broadband performance been so high and reliable that you can effectively use it. Not that VoIP takes much bandwidth, but it needs enough headroom to safely go through. If you have a flatrate broadband connection, peer-to-peer telephony is already free. This is not the case for VoIP over mobile networks, as the air-time cost is still prohibitive, but I'm sure that will change. I'd like to see a Java/MIDP-based Skype client for phones.
                         
5. VoIP Playing Games
   The overriding theme among attendees of this week's VON Fall 2005 Conference was that compelling new communications applications will drive uptake of VOIP technologies, and some observers feel one form of those systems may already be live. Or rather, xBox Live, that is, referring to the online gaming service operated by software giant Microsoft Corp. in support of its Xbox video game console. For even as Forrester Research, of Cambridge, Mass., estimates that nearly 2.78 million U.S. households will utilize Internet telephony communications tools in 2005, Microsoft alone claims nearly as many users of the Live service, which includes VOIP (voice over IP) communications capabilities for chatting among its subscribers.