A few months ago we previewed the beta of Dolby Axon, a piece of software that allows for realistic, natural, and seamless voice chat on the PC through client software.  The software not only supports up to 50 people in a chatroom at once, it allows for positional chat, private partitions, and a virtual meeting space.  

A good cooperative game not only provides players with an engaging experience that requires team work and common goals, it provides a method for facilitating those goals through communication. Sadly, Xbox 360 gamers enjoy a standard voice chat solution through Xbox Live, other systems seem to fall short and require developer intervention or have users taking matters into their own hands. Back in September we looked at Dolby's Axon solution at PAX and came away impressed with what the long time sound company had created. Now as we get closer to the products release, we sat down with Spencer Hooks, Product Marketing Manager in the Games group and Dolby executive Matt Tullis to talk about Axon.

One of the biggest problems with PC gaming for cooperative games is communication.  Traditionally PC games use text based communication as a standard, with voice chat as an afterthought or missing altogether.  While there's software available ilke Ventrillo and Teamspeak to assist in this, a dedicated server is still required.