360-degree Vision

Monday 21 August 2006
Announced at Microsoft's pre-E3 conference back in May and quietly scheduled for release on 19 September, Microsoft's EyeToy challenger Xbox Live Vision will come packaged with the slinky camera itself, a 360 headset, a subscription to one month of Xbox Live Gold, and a registration key for Live card-flipper Uno (which already has built-in Live Vision support.)

Noticeable by its absence isTotemBall, the gesture-driven Live Arcade game that was originally indicated to be bundled with the camera.

In addition to using the camera for video chat, you'll be able to take and edit photos for use in your Gamertag or to email to friends. Like several EyeToy-supporting titles on PS2, games supporting the Live Vision camera will allow you to map your face on to an in-game character, obviously in higher resolution than EyeToy or PS2 are capable of.

While recent demonstrations of the motion-sensing technology being used for Live Vision games included depth perception - which could be seen as muscling in on Wii territory - no actual games have yet been shown supporting it.