Got my hands on the Xbox Live Vision Camera for the Xbox 360 and figured I would take some pictures and post a "mini" review for fellow Assemblers! In advance I apologise for the quality of the pictures, my camera had a hard time focusing on the TV, and the pictures came out a bit on the dark side... The package itself includes the Camera (USB), documentation, headset (the same as currently available), 1 free month of Xbox Live Gold, and UNO for Xbox Live Arcade. The camera uses a standard USB connection and may be plugged into any available USB connector on the 360. Due to it's use of USB, the camera is also PC and Mac OSX compatible. Feature wise, the camera supports VGA video (640x480) at 30fps. Still pictures are taken at 1.3 megapixels. Support for the camera was already added to the Xbox 360 in the spring dashboard update so it works immediatly after being plugged in. When connected, the camera puts a video feed into the background of your dashboard with a watery "wave" effect that changes as you move which is sort of cool. The camera allows for taking custom gamer pictures for use with your profile (though only those on your friends list can see the custom picture - most likely MS worries about naughty bits being seen by all), video chat, sending pictures to friends via the xbox live message system, and in-game video streaming in supported games. YA RLY Video chat supports 2 people and the video quality is pretty decent. It also supports effects which are pretty gimicky such as reversing video colors, blurring the image, or applying photoshop like "sketch" filters. Also, you can cause the other persons controller to vibrate using the analog triggers, which i'm sure will be used in, erm, "creative" ways. The only game which supports the camera right now is UNO, though Texas Hold 'em Poker will be patched to use it, and one assumes most upcoming games will also use it (keep in mind, the camera is not officially released for 3 more weeks, which explains the lack of support at the time of writing). All in all, i'm happy with the camera's features, and assuming it gets decently supported it seems a good buy. Just in the few online matches of UNO I played the camera did make the experience more "personal" and should be great fun in the future. And for the retail price fo $39.99 you can't go too wrong. Hope to be seeing some of you online in the future - literally!
out of interest.. did you try to plug it to your computer? and if so, did it work on your computer too? edit: nevermind just read that it was PC compatible in your review.. so I guess it does work
Nice review sonikku:clap: I'm looking foward to video streaming. Little video messages, starfox-style, thats what MMO games need.
Nah, was one of those "create your own faceplate" things I got at Best Buy...not very good to be honest.
So..your avatar is a live feed to everyone playing in Uno? Or is it just a still snapshot that was taken before at the dashboard? If it's a live feed, how many FPS is it?
Are Microsoft going to copy Sony's Eyetoy style games, or is it just for video chat and uploading pictures?
