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.
Today Dolby has announced the official release of the client as well as Dolby Axon Surround Pass, a $19.99 a year subscription service that give you access to premium Axon features like persistent chat rooms, the visual chat room interface, and surround sound. Plus anytime you're in a room with a Surround Pass subscriber, the entire room will be "upgraded" for the duration of that session. The normal chat client remains free to download.
The real question will of course be, can this catch on? Can co-op sessions be improved with better, more accurate communication?
Source: Axon.dolby.com