Dolby Axon Delivers High-Quality Voice Chat to EA’s Need for Speed World

Superior voice quality, easy integration, and extreme reliability are just a few of the benefits Dolby® Axon provides to one of the world’s leading interactive entertainment software companies: Electronic Arts (EA).

A popular creator of platform, PC, and online video games, EA also has a growing number of free-to-play, microtransaction-based games, including the online racing game Need for Speed™ World (NFSW).

The PC-based massively multiplayer version of one of EA’s most successful franchises, Need for Speed, NFSW is a driving game designed to take hard-core car culture to the more casual user.

After our smooth experience in development and deployment, we also found the Dolby Axon service itself to be extremely reliable. –Jean-Charles Gaudechon, Producer, Need for Speed World

The Objective

To engage players and keep them coming back for more, NFSW developers constantly refresh the game with new cars, features, and modes. In this case, NFSW developers wanted to give players a deeper sense of immersion, a tactical edge, and a way for players to communicate that wouldn’t disrupt their game play.

“We realized that online voice chat would be the perfect solution. For this to be effective, though, we needed a low-latency solution with excellent voice quality,” said Jean-Charles Gaudechon, Producer for NFSW. “And given our tight timelines, we needed something that could be easily integrated and rolled out.”

"It was a no-brainer for us to go with Dolby and use Dolby Axon technology, which was able to answer all our needs, both from feature development and integration standpoints,” said Gaudechon. “[Dolby being] a leader with a strong motivation to collaborate with us and deliver extremely high-quality sound for our game made it an easy choice."

Dolby Axon in NFSW provides expanded game-play possibilities, allowing users to:

Experience clear, high-quality voice chat without noise, echoing, or clipping

Talk hands-free

Coordinate with other players to locate each other and organize objectives

Also, having an easy-to-use in-game voice chat like Dolby Axon means NFSW players don’t need to set up a separate chat application for the game.

The Results

Dolby not only delivered a superior-quality voice chat client with Dolby Axon but also provided comprehensive development, implementation, and client support throughout the process.

The technical implementation was very smooth.

The Dolby Axon application programming interface (API) was easy to integrate.

The software development kit (SDK) tools made testing straightforward.

The Dolby Axon development team provided excellent technical support.

Assistance was comprehensive and turnaround time was fast.

All service operations processes were determined in a steady, predictable manner.

All deployment milestones were reached on time.

“Overall, we were very happy with how everything went, from development to rollout,” said Gaudechon.

The live launch of Dolby Axon in NFSW occurred seamlessly on April 12, 2011. Since then, there has been great response from players and a steady usage level of around 20 percent.

“It definitely added a new dimension to our game, and the constant usage level is a good indicator of this fact,” said Gaudechon.

Dolby Axon has proven to be an extremely reliable service for NFSW. Players find it easy to use, and since it went live, it has required little customer support on the part of the NFSW team.

Gaudechon said that “down the road, Need for Speed World players can look forward to designs around other Dolby Axon features, voice fonts being a good example.”