Is Microsoft Working on Universal Vid Cap for Xbox 360 Games?

By Brian Crecente, 10:00 AM on Fri Oct 2 2009, 10,956 views (Edit, to draft, Slurp)

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In a meeting last week with a game developer at the Tokyo Game Show, I asked them if they were planning on trying to incorporate in-game video capture into their title. The type you see in Halo 3.

The answer was interesting and, I believe, accidental.

"We'd love to have video capture in our game, but why work on something that the platform holder is already developing," said the developer, who I'm keeping anonymous to cover for his accidental slip-up.

The idea of a universal, platform-level video capture system for games seems like a good idea, and one that fits in nicely with the plans that Microsoft has for the Xbox 360.

When I had a chance to sit down with Microsoft's Scott Austin, director of digital games at Live, I asked him about the concept.

Microsoft, I noted, has made it a point to try and drive innovation on their consoles with software. They were the first gaming console to fully, successfully embrace online play when they introduced the Live service on their original Xbox. When the Xbox 360 hit, the software company unveiled Achievements, something that has approached becoming almost a norm among online gaming now.

Could the ability to capture and share videos from games be the next big software development for the Xbox 360?

"We are always thinking about ways that Live at the platform level can make games better," Austin said. "I'm not going to comment on video capture, but you can assume we are thinking about ways to make things more interactive.

"Interactivity used to mean things like multiplayer, now you see more cooperative things in games."

Austin points to the in-game leaderboards of Xbox Live title Shadow Complex and the meta game incorporated in Battlefield 1943 that had all players working to unlock a new map. (The same communal unlock was in the PS3 version of the game as well.)

Communal videos then, I pointed out, seem to be a step in the right direction. And I've heard rumblings of it coming to other top games, like Dead Rising 2.

Austin was coy in his reply.

"We want to have better quality and more immersive experiences," he said. "We are always looking to innovate.

"When innovation becomes table stakes we want to move forward. We want to make all entertainment services more rich with our live services."

So is that a yes or a no?

http://kotaku.com/5372976/is-microsoft-working-on-universal-vid-cap-for-xbox-360-games

Could be a nice integration with Facebook and Twitter I guess.

Sounds pretty yes like to me. If it was a no then they would say so.

Wouldn't this require more additional hardware power? Try recording your PC screen with the various screen recording software out there. It eats up quite alot of your system's hardware resources.

I can see it working with a new hardware accessory that records your Xbox 360's output (not your tv) so it's perfect quality but not from a simple firmware update unless there has always been a hidden 4th core in there. (impossible)

Doesn't seem to be a problem with Halo 3's replays.  Sigh..

That would be great, but it might not happen.

That's not video capture, though.

It's the objects' postions and status data being stored and then re-rendered at will. It's a lot less data than capturing frame by frame and allows replay modes with better graphics, or where you can control the camera, etc. Re-rendering requires the game engine, so even if it's done for you on a server and converted into a video, that's not universal.