Reviewed: September 8, 2006
Reviewed by: Mark Smith

Manufacturer
Microsoft

Type: USB Camera
System: Xbox 360

Rating: 8.0

Xbox Live Vision
MSRP: $39.99
Features

The Xbox Live Vision is the first of the new accessories to arrive for the 360 and follows in the footsteps of PlayStation’s EyeToy, but perhaps with a grander…err…”vision” in store for gamers.

The Xbox Live Vision is quite simply a VGA camera with a 640x480 resolution capable of snapping still images at 1.3 mega-pixels (cell phone quality) or it can record video up to 30fps.

As with most new hardware releases, especially niche peripherals, they are often ahead of their time, or at least ahead of the games required to make them “must have” purchases the day they release. The Vision is no exception, as there is little out there to exploit its capabilities at the moment, but that will likely change all too soon.

The problem is even more compounded for me, reviewing the camera almost two weeks ahead of when the rest of the public will get their hands on one, but even at this early stage of its lifecycle I can see some real potential, and truth be told, in the five days I’ve had my Live Vision I’ve already used it more than my EyeToy that I’ve had for over a year.

Hooking up the Vision camera is the very definition of simplistic. Simply turn on your 360 and go to the Dashboard. Make sure you are already signed onto Live so you can get any updates you might need for the camera. Chances are, you probably already have the update that added the Vision menu entry to your system blade.

Plug the camera into one of the available USB (controller) ports and the green ring of light around the lens will light up indicating you are Live and shooting. Head over to the system blade and choose the Vision setup to bring up a window of what the camera is seeing. You can turn the lens on the camera to focus and tilt and pivot until you have everything lined up with where you will be sitting.

The Vision camera has a 4x zoom, which allows the camera to crop much of the surrounding area and focus on your face. I sit about 6-8 feet from my Xbox/TV and the full frame picks up my entire body, the sofa, and part of the wall behind me, but if I zoom in I get a tight crop that includes my head and shoulders.

Obviously, if you are playing games or taking headshots for your gamer profile this is the preferred zoom, but if you are video chatting with a room full of friends you might want to opt for the more panoramic shot.

My biggest worry was lighting. I play mostly in the dark or at best, low light conditions, and the EyeToy has always required insane amounts of artificial light to even work. The Vision worked great with just the table lamp turned on, and even more surprising, it worked with no lights on in the room at all. Granted, the image is rather dark and my face is cast in an eerie blue glow of the UNO background, but the camera does adjust and pick up images in very low light environments.

The first thing you’ll notice once you have the Vision camera up and running is that your Dashboard menu has now turned transparent and you can see the camera shot behind the menus. Even cooler, the Dashboard now has this watery ripple effect and if you wave your hands or move around in the camera you can create waves that ripple throughout the Dashboard.

This cool interactive effect also extends to the Visualization effects while listen to music. You now get all those cool psychedelic background animations but if you wave or move around you can create these ghostly images and motion blurs within the visualizations.

Obviously, the first thing I did was to replace the image in my gamer tag with my photo. As a welcome security measure, only those on your active Friends List will actually see your photo. Everybody else still just sees your clipart.

There are also new options for video chat, which brings up a split-screen display showing each side of the conversation as well as the ability to snap a still image and attach it to a message.

As far as using the camera with actual games, there isn’t much out there other than the parlor games on Xbox Live Arcade, at least for now. I fired up UNO and sure enough, my standard clipart image was replaced with a real-time video feed of me sitting in front of my TV. Again, strangers weren’t seeing the same video I was seeing, but when I played people who were on my Friends List, they did.

As more people start to get the camera and developers start thinking of clever uses, there will most certainly be more games that take advantage of video and still images. Imagine, taking a picture of your face and using that as a texture for the lead character in that action game or sports title you are playing. And AntiGrav on the PS2 has already proven that capturing body movements and translating them into game controls is not only possible, but a lot of fun.

The Live Vision will be available in two flavors, the core package, and a deluxe kit as detailed in the sidebar. It would have been nice to offer a “camera only” option. As it is, if you are already a Live user you will be getting a second headset no matter which package you choose.

Unless you are really into UNO or Texas Hold ’em or just like to impress your friends with new toys, you might have trouble justifying the $40 price tag. On the other hand, if you have friends who also get the camera then the video chat could easily be worth the cost of admission.

And therein lies the rub. The Live Vision is really only fun if you have friends who have it too; otherwise the experience is rather one-sided. After all, you don’t want them to see your lack of a good poker face when all you get to see is a piece of art.

It’s probably too early to tell for sure – after all, the EyeToy really didn’t come into its own until almost a year after it released, but the Live Vision is already headed in the right direction and doing some pretty cool things to keep you amused, even if there aren’t any AAA titles to really exploit the possibilities just yet.

Rest assured, Microsoft is laying the groundwork for what will ultimately become the next phase in online gaming, both community and gameplay. Xbox Live just got a whole lot more personal.