When the Xbox 360 first launched nearly a year ago, we all knew that a camera was going to be one of the accessory items for the gaming console. In fact, we thought that the camera would be launched fairly soon after the console launched so we waited.. and waited.. and waited. Then finally in September of THIS year, the Xbox Live Vision camera was launched by Microsoft. Did it usher in a whole new era of gaming? Weeeellll.. not quite… but it does bring a whole new freshness to the gaming console as well as add additional value to certain games out there. I’ve actually had the unit for about three weeks now but I never got a chance to actually look at it until now. Let’s take a quick look at the Xbox Live Vision camera and see what it offers to the 360 platform.

Give me the features..

The Xbox Live Vision Camera features:

  • USB 2.0 support
  • VGA resolutions (640 x 480) video capture at 30 frames per second
  • Digital still captures at 1.3 megapixels
  • Support for both the Xbox 360 and Windows XP systems

You can purchase the camera in two different packages. The first package is just the regular Xbox Live Vision Camera and it comes with:

  • Xbox Live Vision Camera
  • One month trial Xbox Live Gold Membership
  • Xbox 360 Headset
  • Games UNO and TotemBall

The second package is the Xbox Live Vision Gold Pack which features:

  • Everything above AND
  • Twelve month Xbox Live Gold Subscription
  • 200 Marketplace Points
  • Robotron 2084

The regular Xbox Live Vision sells for $39.99 while the Xbox Live Vision Gold Pack sells for $79.99.

I’ll be reviewing the regular package in this review. Here are some pictures of the standard package:

Here’s a look inside the package:

and a look at the camera from several angles:

 

If you didn’t already have a headset, well now you do.

 Setting things up

Setting up the Xbox Live Vision camera on an Xbox 360 is EXTREMELY easy. First unpack the camera – find a nice place to put it in your environment, and then connect the camera to an available USB port on the Xbox 360. That’s it! There’s no software to add (unless of course you haven’t updated your Xbox 360 in quite some time in which case you’ll need to get a system update from Xbox Live)

Once connected to the Xbox 360, the cameras’ “Ring of Light” will blink to indicate it’s connected (assumingyour Xbox 360 is also on). The Ring of Light will glow a cool green if video capture is going on.

The toughest part of the install is finding a good place to put the camera – especially if the Xbox is in your living room like it is in mine. I tend to sit far back from the television set so I’ll look a wee bit tiny on the screen during video capture. Ah but wait – Microsoft realized this and added a little zoom feature to the software program which allows the camera to focus in on a specific portion of the captured screen. Nice.

You can test and configure the video portion of the camera by going to the Systems tab of the Xbox Dashboard and then selecting Xbox Live Vision.

From here, you can configure the Room and Lighting settings. For Room, you can select “Auto”, “Light Wall”, and “Dark Wall” while for Lighting you can select “Auto”, “Daylight”, “Flourescent”, and “Incandescent”.

Another way you’ll know the Xbox Live Vision camera is working on  your 360 is simply by looking at your Dashboard. You’ll notice that the background has a watery effect to it.. and in fact, the live video feed is blended into the background of the current theme. Pretty nifty effect (although the Xbox Live Camera does end up running a bit warm if you leave the console running for some time).

I’ve uploaded a video of the menu items associated to the Xbox Live Vision camera from within the Dashboard here (unfortunately the watery effect isn’t obvious in the video because of my digital camera’s limited capabilities):

 

Operating the Xbox Live Vision camera is very straightforward. You simply point the camera at the object you want to record, and begin shooting. If the picture is out of focus, simply rotate the lens ring until the picture appears clear. Sorry – no auto-focusing here.

Great.. now what?

So where can you use the Xbox Live Vision camera? Naturally the camera makes for great in-game fun for video games that come with support for the camera. There are several Xbox Live Arcade games that have support for the Live Vision camera including UNO and Texas Hold’em. I launched up UNO to see what using Vision would be like and here’s the a quick game play in video.

 

The Live Vision camera also makes a great addition to the World Series of Poker Tournament of Championsx game. You can create a digimask face out of snapshots taken by the camera. Here I took snapshots of Homer which I had won over the summer at the Orange County Fair. Hilarious ain’t it?

During game play, you can also see a live video feed from the player under the gun. Of course you never know what you might end up seeing. Having the Live Vision camera certainly opens the door to fun and games.. and some umm extra unexpected features.

Customizing your gamer profile

You can also customize your gamer profile using your Xbox Live Vision camera to take a personal picture of yourself. Personal pictures can only be seen by your friends unfortunately but I’m sure this is done to prevent people from abusing the camera.

Maybe instead of a hand.. I’ll use Homer as my picture.

Let me zoom in a little..

 

You can even add predefined effects to your picture just to add some snazz to the overall look and feel of the snapshot.

Video chat and messages with your pals

Finally the most obvious application of the Live Vision camera within the Xbox Live network aside from gaming is video chatting with friends. You can initiate a video chat session with any of your online pals irregardless of whether they have a Xbox Live Vision cam or not.

As we mentioned before, you can zoom in on the picture to get a better shot of yourself or whatever you want to show.

You can also send messages to your friends with pictures as attachments. Pretty neat features overall but like I said earlier.. I can totally imagine the Live Vision camera being abused by some gamers. Be prepared is all I have to say on this matter.

Although I didn’t test this feature, the Xbox Live Vision can also be used as a webcam for your Windows XP machine. Nice feature in case you don’t feel like spending money for an additional webcam for your PC.

Summary

The Xbox Live Vision camera has been a long time coming. We all knew it was an accessory item that Microsoft was planning to deliver for the Xbox 360 – we just didn’t know it would take this long to do so. Now that it’s out, you can expect more games to support the camera thereby additional a whole new dimension to gaming on the 360 console (not to mention a whole new level of ridiculousness!). It’s a great feature to add to your Xbox 360 if you’re into having your face on the Internet. Of course if you enjoy anonymity, then the Live Vision camera is NOT for you. The base package is inexpensive and will instantly add a new level of enjoyment to certain games as well as the Xbox 360 in general.

No Tags