Voxli, a new Y Combinator startup launching today, is looking to make group voice chat as simple as possible. The service allows gamers and team members to visit a static persistent URL to join a group chat session, and features push-to-talk using a browser plugin. Voxli is available on Internet Explorer and Firefox (both Mac and Windows) with support for more browsers on the way.
At launch, Voxli is focusing on making its service appealing to gamers, who often like to speak with each other as they play team based games. In-game voice chat isn’t a new concept – I remember using a program called Roger Wilco to play Counter Strike nearly a decade ago. Since then games like World of Warcraft have made voice chat a necessity, as they revolve around large-scale group activities (called raids) where communication is essential.
Now there are a variety of chat clients available, including Ventrilo, TeamSpeak, and Mumble. But most of these require manual entry of port numbers and server addresses, which can be confusing. Voxli gets around these issues by offering users a static URL that they can then send around to their team members, which is far more convenient. Voxli is also a browser plugin, not a native client, which the team believes will make it more appealing.
To use Voxli, users assign a hotkey to their chat room which they press whenever they want to speak in-game (the hot key works regardless of which application is open). The system supports up to 200 simultaneous users per room, and gamers can open new tabs if they’d like to participate in multiple chats at once (they can assign a different hot key to each room).
For the duration of its public beta period, which will last 1-2 months, Voxli will be free for everyone, with no registration required to get started. This lack of restrictions comes with one major caveat – there’s currently no way to restrict access to your chat room, so a rival guild member could potentially infiltrate your group (the Voxli team says introducing restricted rooms is a top priority). Eventually Voxli will begin charging users a modest amount, but the team says that its reduced infrastructure costs (they use services like EC2) will allow it charge around half of what its competitors cost.
Awesome. I have been looking for something like this for WOW
Hey john, why would you use voxli over the ingame voice chat for WoW. I use WoWs ingame now but I’d change if voxli is better.
Hey everyone. I’m Andrew, one of the Voxli founders. Please let us know any feedback you have about the product – we’ll be following these comments. We’re hard at working trying to make it the best possible!
I’ve been looking for something like this for a while. Adding restricts will be huge. Sing me up!
Count down before “From India” in 5,4,3,2,1 …
At least “From India” contributes intelligently to postings. Probably you can learn something from her. Time to grow up Sarah (shaking my head).
Oh and please (you and your buddies) should stop spamming TC.
Doubtful, and we all know you’re “From India” so go away, we don’t want to visit your blog.
Andrew:
I wish you nothing but success. However, I hate Ycombinator and everything those theives in the night stand for.
How do I reconcile these conflicting feelings?
I will hang up and listen for your answer. Seriously, good luck!
Guys – really like the product and the progress I’ve been watching it go through. Bring back those ‘poking’ features!
Awesome product, guys!
I’ve been using voxli to play dota with a couple friends who would have been otherwise too lazy to install ventrillo. As the article mentioned, I like that I can just paste in a url to get them to join in the voice chat.
Pity it doesn’t work in Safari on a Mac yet, but this seems really impressive. When I used to play games more often with friends etc using Teamspeak/Vent was always a pain and not everyone had both programs installed which made it more annoying.
I have a feeling this site will be huge amongst gamers (basically anyone who plays a game like WoW, or Counter Strike in a clan will want to use it).
Andrew,
Knock on Game Payments group: http://www.link...m/e/gis/1192457
we (all major game payment providers of this small world) will help you to monetize your thing.
I see you’re working for Lars, btw. Is your venture somehow connected with his main project?
Very impressed with the simplicity they brought to the app. Great job.
Isn’t this kinda what ViVox does? Don’t you need to be integrated into the game?
Not to downplay this- But its a failcoaster idea for both users with great and lousy computers. Everyone needs more power.
Sorry, But there is a reason every gamer in the world closes firefox and IE before they play a game:
Besides, why improve on something ( ventrilo, teamspeak) thats already damn near perfect? Just because you *can* make something browser based definitely doesnt mean you should.
http://ioj.com/v/0d7jg
By the way- Hard to beat the price of “Free” – You can get a ventrilo server for up to 20 people I believe it is for free. As in no money- Mumble has no charge either, so yeah.
Hello hello. I’d like to point out getting a voice conference in Ventrilo/Mumble requires you to download a voice server, configure it, then get all your friends to download the client and connect. Not only that but someone has to host that server, so their gaming bandwidth is going to be ruined. Even if you somehow worked around this, Ventrilo’s free server supports a max of 8 people.
In contrast, anyone can set up a voice conference for 200 people on Voxli with a few clicks, so it is substantially easier. Try getting a non-gamer to install and use Ventrilo!
Skype better watch out, as should freeconference.com. I work for a few volunteer groups and I think non-profits will rejoice — finally some good, inexpensive, web-based voice conferencing software! And I like that you can just forward a URL to get someone in your room.
You may also check out http://www.loudtalks.com, which is lightweight and easy PTT for PC and Windows Mobile devices.
we want in-game voice chat
http://www.xfire.com
1) Free.
2) In-game voice with overlay
3) Sounds better
4) “saved rooms” with room invites. “Right-click->Invite To Room”
5) Free.
Disclaimer: Affiliated.
Push-to-talk isn’t something I would want to go back to when I’m gaming.
Frantic MP shooters already have enough a grip on my fingers and keyboard. In the age of Xbox Live PTT is just way too 1999’s for me.
I can’t see any committed group of gamers use this instead of ingame-chat, ventrillo or teamspeak. Even Skype would suit me more if the number of players was low enough.
Hi Nickyp, just wanted to point out that you CAN set the record mode to “always on.” That way you don’t have to use push-to-talk.
Did anyone bother to notice it still makes you download a program to use it? lol
yes is a great appilication ,
and i write an article about this service in my blog
http://phonegra...t-en-ligne.html