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FOR
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
AND INTERNET TELEPHONY
Sega DreamCast Game Consoles, Powered By InnoMedia's
VoIP Technology,
Allow Millions Of Gamers Around The World To Talk Live While Playing
San Jose, Calif. — May 10, 2000 — InnoMedia™, Inc., a leading provider of Internet telephony products and services, today announced a partnership with Sega Enterprises, Ltd. that will revolutionize the gaming experience for millions of Sega gamers around the world. Sega will incorporate InnoMedia's Internet telephony capabilities into the Dreamcast™ game console. Sega, a pioneer in the network gaming arena, is the first company to allow gamers to speak with one another live while playing games over the Internet.
Sega's new DreamCall™ product, which is powered by InnoMedia's Voice-over-IP (VoIP) technology, also allows Sega gamers to use their Dreamcast device to place Internet telephone calls and speak with any other DreamCall Sega gamer in the world for free, bypassing long distance toll charges. In addition, they can use the VoIP-enabled Dreamcast device to place calls to any wireline or wireless telephone in more than 200 countries through InnoSphere™, InnoMedia's global Internet telephony service network. InnoSphere rates are as little as 2 cents per minute to Hong Kong; 5 cents per minute to the USA or the UK; and 9 cents per minute to Japan, Australia, Canada and most of Europe.
"Sega is proud of its track record in offering technical advances that enhance the gaming experience. Voice-over-IP is the latest innovation that further extends our leadership position in Internet gaming," said Mr. Hideki Sato, corporate senior vice president for Sega Enterprises, Ltd. "InnoMedia was the ideal company to partner with on this next-generation game console capability. In addition to its superior technologies, InnoMedia provides an end-to-end VoIP platform which ensures a managed signal path and delivers the highest voice quality."
"Internet gamers already spend a lot of time with online text chatting, so voice-over-IP provides an important way to really enhance the online gaming experience," said Joseph Gagan, senior analyst with The Yankee Group. "The Sega/InnoMedia partnership brings together leading names in the gaming and IP telephony worlds and will undoubtedly create quite a stir in the industry."
Dr. Nan-Sheng Lin, president and co-founder of InnoMedia, Inc. said, "We are excited that our technology will be available to every Sega Dreamcast user. This partnership dramatically expands our reach, enabling us to serve millions of additional users around the world. We are pleased to know that the many recent investments and upgrades we've made to our network infrastructure will support this new class of voice-over-IP user."
InnoMedia provides its Internet telephony technologies to partners like Sega through its "Powered by InnoMedia" program, in licensing, OEM and private labeling agreements. InnoMedia's mission is to offer the best quality and value in Internet telephony solutions to partners and customers, enabling a variety of innovative products and services to reach new categories of users.
Crisp, Clear Voice Quality
Sega gamers who take advantage of InnoMedia's VoIP technologies will enjoy
outstanding digital voice quality. InnoMedia has invested years of engineering
work in packet recovery, echo cancellation, and other technologies that
create superior signal quality in IP telephony applications. Gamers will
be spared the stuttering voice experience of less robust IP telephony
solutions.
Availability
Sega will provide its DreamCall software to users in Japan in this summer.
The Internet telephony service will subsequently be offered to Dreamcast
users worldwide, including those in the United States and Europe.
About Voice-over-IP (VoIP)
In VoIP systems, analog voice signals are digitized and transmitted as
a stream of packets over a digital data network. IP networks allow each
packet to independently find the most efficient path to the intended destination,
thereby best using network resources at any given instant. The packets
associated with a single source may thus take many different paths to
the destination in traversing the network, arriving with different end-to-end
delays, arriving out of sequence, or possibly not arriving at all. At
the destination, however, the packets are re-assembled and converted back
into the original voice signal. VoIP technology insures proper reconstruction
of the voice signals, compensating for echoes made audible due to the
end-to-end delay, for jitter, and for dropped packets.
About InnoMedia
Founded in 1995, InnoMedia is a privately held multinational organization
with operations in the United States, Singapore, Taiwan and China. InnoMedia
provides end-to-end IP telephony solutions for consumers, enterprises,
service providers and OEM customers. The company's integrated family of
products and its quality-managed network services enable enhanced telecommunications
services by employing the power of the Internet. For more information
on InnoMedia, visit the company's web site at www.innomedia.com.
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Dreamcast and DreamCall are trademarks of Sega Enterprises, Ltd.
