In an article on Xbox.com, Alex McLain had a chance to speak with Kumar Banerjee who is the man behind the upcoming 360 camera and microphone. It looks to be something similar to the Sony EyeTOY with features like group video chat and beefed up technology. The camera is said to display images at 30 frames per second (Film Quality is 27 frames per second) while being designed to perform in low light environments as well. Obviously it can also be used in games to recognize gestures and other visual cues.
From The Article:
To further illustrate the point, he mentioned, "It's not just the camera, we have the microphone as well." The microphone plugs directly into the controller and allows your voice to carry through to the recipient's TV or stereo speakers.
The microphone connected to the Xbox 360 Controller allows group chat, unlike the Xbox 360 Headset. Video chat and video messaging with your friends will become an integrated part of the Xbox Live experience.
The specs for the camera are something to behold, and the ability to hold quality video chats with your friends is just plain neat. But what use does it have in gaming? Banerjee responds with a couple of interesting points. "It will open the door for the future of gesture gaming, and it goes hand-in-hand with the software that's developed for it."
In short, the camera offers developers the ability to add elements of gameplay that could directly respond to your own actions. For example, imagine controlling a squad of soldiers by silently gesturing where to go, instead of issuing a voice command and alerting nearby guards.
This ushers in a new generation of fun online motion detection-enabled games where you use your body to control on-screen characters over Xbox Live. The camera and microphone offer the functionality, so now it's up to the game developers to find innovative ways to implement it.
These two accessories offer us a taste of the sort of innovation the next generation of gaming will bring. Now, let's let our imaginations run wild and wait for developers to do the same.
What I find most interesting is the addition of the microphone and its ability to add a total group chat feature unlike the single chat that is built into the dashboard. Group chat was already included in the original Xbox but was taken out for 360. On a recent 360 dev team blog, developers explained this as a bandwidth issue stating, "Imagine QuickChat did let you speak with multiple people at a time. This means you'd need to send data to multiple people, thereby multiplying the amount of bandwidth you need. This may make QuickChat go over the 64kbps total that is available. If you have a much faster pipe, this would not be a problem. However, measuring available bandwidth is a non-trivial problem that has had many academic papers written about it." While that may be true for playing games, it does not explain why group chat was not implemented as a dashboard only feature like Xbox. Now it looks more like a marketing move to get people to buy more cameras. Want group chat? Buy a camera. Even still the camera does add some interesting functionality like using your picture for your gamer profile. What remains unclear is how Xbox Live will manage the almost certain flood of profane images that will hit Live! once the camera is released.
To further illustrate the point, he mentioned, "It's not just the camera, we have the microphone as well." The microphone plugs directly into the controller and allows your voice to carry through to the recipient's TV or stereo speakers.
The microphone connected to the Xbox 360 Controller allows group chat, unlike the Xbox 360 Headset. Video chat and video messaging with your friends will become an integrated part of the Xbox Live experience.
The specs for the camera are something to behold, and the ability to hold quality video chats with your friends is just plain neat. But what use does it have in gaming? Banerjee responds with a couple of interesting points. "It will open the door for the future of gesture gaming, and it goes hand-in-hand with the software that's developed for it."
In short, the camera offers developers the ability to add elements of gameplay that could directly respond to your own actions. For example, imagine controlling a squad of soldiers by silently gesturing where to go, instead of issuing a voice command and alerting nearby guards.
This ushers in a new generation of fun online motion detection-enabled games where you use your body to control on-screen characters over Xbox Live. The camera and microphone offer the functionality, so now it's up to the game developers to find innovative ways to implement it.
These two accessories offer us a taste of the sort of innovation the next generation of gaming will bring. Now, let's let our imaginations run wild and wait for developers to do the same.
What I find most interesting is the addition of the microphone and its ability to add a total group chat feature unlike the single chat that is built into the dashboard. Group chat was already included in the original Xbox but was taken out for 360. On a recent 360 dev team blog, developers explained this as a bandwidth issue stating, "Imagine QuickChat did let you speak with multiple people at a time. This means you'd need to send data to multiple people, thereby multiplying the amount of bandwidth you need. This may make QuickChat go over the 64kbps total that is available. If you have a much faster pipe, this would not be a problem. However, measuring available bandwidth is a non-trivial problem that has had many academic papers written about it." While that may be true for playing games, it does not explain why group chat was not implemented as a dashboard only feature like Xbox. Now it looks more like a marketing move to get people to buy more cameras. Want group chat? Buy a camera. Even still the camera does add some interesting functionality like using your picture for your gamer profile. What remains unclear is how Xbox Live will manage the almost certain flood of profane images that will hit Live! once the camera is released.
