Skype for PS Vita brings in-game video calls!

 

Following its arrival on the Windows Phone Marketplace, Skype has now landed on the PS Vita as a free app letting owners make and receive video and voice calls over 3G and Wi-Fi connections even during gameplay. 


Skype for PS Vita works using the PS Vita’s on-board microphone and cameras to make video calls possible. The feature owners can most look forward to is the exciting and very useful new ‘background’ mode.

During gameplay the mode lets you take Skype calls even during gameplay by pressing the PS button on the console. A pop-up notification alerts gamers when a call is coming in so that you won’t miss a call, and can easily chat about the games you’re playing with fellow PS Vita-owning Skype buddies.

Skype promises to it will continue updating and upgrading the app after its arrival, to deliver forth new features in future. 


“A lot of account functionality is not yet enabled,” Manrique Brenes, senior director, consumer electronics group at Skype told games site Polygon. “We will continue to enable features,” Brenes says, adding that Skype plans to introduce the service to as many platforms as possible.

“With the launch of Skype for PS Vita, we are taking another step towards our ultimate goal of making Skype video calling available on every platform, all over the world, and meeting the demands of existing PlayStation users to offer video on a gaming console.”

Skype for PS Vita is available for free right now. Simply head to the playStation Store to download the app that pretty much turns the PS Vita into the closest thing to a new PlayStation Phone. Have you tried it yet? Let us know what you think so far.

Facebook adds Skype video chat feature

Facebook has announced a partnership with Skype to add video chat to the social networking site.

facebook and skype

The move is likely to be seen as a shot across the bow of Google, which recently launched a Facebook rival, Google+, also featuring video calling.

This is not the first time Facebook and Skype have teamed up - they already share some instant messaging tools.

Skype is in the process of being bought by Microsoft, which is a major shareholder in Facebook.

The new video-call service was launched by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who also revealed that the site now had more than 750 million users.  However, he said that the total number of active users was no longer a useful measure of the site's success. Instead, the amount of sharing - of photographs, videos and web links - was a better indication of how people engaged with the site, explained Mr Zuckerberg.
One to one    At launch, Facebook's video chat service will only be able to connect two users face-to-face, whereas Google's system allows group video calls, known as Hangouts.