Vivox Inc. one of the leading providers of voice and text chat for some of the most popular video games, dropped some major news for Switch owners recently.
Thanks to Vivox’s latest suite of tools, all Nintendo Switch developers, regardless of studio size, are invited to start using their technology for free! Developers will now be able to utilize the Vivox SDK on the Nintendo Switch, which will then provide in-game voice chat capabilities via a headset plugged directly into the console. In addition to voice chat, the SDK is also capable of providing text communication and cross play functionality across PC and consoles.
Have you heard? We're releasing an SDK to add text and voice chat to *Nintendo Switch* games!
Free for small studios and indie devs, Vivox is dedicated to providing a top-notch experience to players at an accessible price. https://t.co/4ceaQ4DxCA #indiedev 🎮
— Vivox (@Vivox_Inc) February 5, 2019
Epic Games’ Fortnite has already used Vivox’s SDK on the Switch with great results. We have now learned that Hi-Rez Studios will also be utilizing the SDK for their Switch versions of SMITE and Paladins. Vivox President Dave Verratti, recently issued the statement: “We’ve already seen a great deal of success with Nintendo and the use of our voice services in Fortnite,” said Verratti. “We are extremely proud to be a part of the Nintendo ecosystem. We’re happy to help Nintendo continue to push the envelope in their products by bringing gamers together through enhanced communications. Multiplayer games can and should excel on Nintendo Switch, and we’re excited to see the results of the Vivox SDK on Nintendo Switch.”
As documented by the NPD Group, Switch has proven to be an extremely successful console hybrid in terms of revenue this generation. For some gamers, one of the major weaknesses of Nintendo’s latest platform has been its inconsistency in providing universal voice and text chat features across all games. It will be very interesting to see how this news affects the Nintendo Switch online infrastructure moving forward.
