Official camera details emerge

Here's a followup to the last post where we mulled over the various possibilities of the Xbox 360 camera. Kumar Banerjee of the Microsoft hardware team had some good information to share about the peripheral.

For starters, the device will be able to bag input at about thirty frames per second. As the article suggests, many video games implement this framerate, which tells us that the quality will be at least comparable to most webcams. We already know video chat is in the cards, so what else can it do? According to Mr. Banerjee, the camera will have the capability to take stills (think leader boards and mugshots), perform in low light situations, and features the intriguing gesture-initiated gameplay. Not sure how Microsoft will handle the use of uploading pictures, for cost or otherwise, seeing as how this might give some people the chance to show us more than just their gleaming face.

So imagine being able to use your hands for something a little more innovative than swatting at blind spots in the air. The idea behind the gesture gameplay is something that will allow gamers to use motion to signal things like squadron commands (advance, pull back, etc.) without the use of voice directions. The possibilities here are virtually endless, so it's up to the developers to come up with creative applications for it.

[Thanks, Matt]