The Xbox 360 Wireless Communicator
Filed under: Accessories , Product Ideas , Xbox 360
Most of my family and many of my friends live a few thousand miles away. Sure, you can use web cams to communicate but sitting at a computer isn’t a great social or family experience. While the Xbox Live Vision Camera can be used for family room video chats it is still largely a solo experience since a headset must be used.
Now imagine an accessory, I'll call it the Xbox 360 Wireless Communicator, that acts like a good speaker phone (or for those that are familiar, a Polycom Soundstation). When combined with the Xbox Live Vision Camera you can have true room-to-room video chat. I would love for my family to have weekly video chats with grandparents, aunts, uncles, nephews, etc, where everyone can participate. Even if that doesn't sound exciting to you the Communicator is the perfect party gaming experience; you can trash talk an entire room.
The features would be as follows:
- 100% wire-free
- Communicates with the Xbox 360 wirelessly
- Runs on battery (same charge packs as the controller), though can use AC
- Mute button
- Coloured LED to indicate when mute is on or off
- Anyone in the room can easily see the LED and now the status
- Full duplex audio (i.e. send and receive sound at the same time)
- Echo cancellation (i.e. prevent sound from looping back on itself)
- Works with the Xbox 360 Wireless Gaming Receiver for Windows
From Microsoft’s perspective, the Communicator requires no software changes on the 360 since it is essentially an Xbox 360 Wireless Headset. Just let me emphasis that this must have superior sound quality; as close as possible to a Polycom Soundstation.
This is as a device that could further expand the target audience of the Xbox 360. In conjunction with being a media extender, having downloadable movies and later in 2007 adding Internet television, the Xbox 360 would be front row as a true family-room social media appliance.
I would buy the Communicator for family members with 360s (currently a couple do) and would consider buying 360s for those that don’t once a price drop happens. I can certainly think of one Xbox team member that could have put it to good use.
I can think of a couple reasons why this would be unlikely to happen:
1) Lots of competition - Competing with the likes of Skype or Vonage who have fairly well established tech and hardware.
2) Inefficient - The console would have to be powered up for it to work. Leaving the 360 on just to allow people to call you is not an ideal situation.
3) Bad History - MS tried before to make their own phone and got burned. I can't imagine they'd be terribly enthusiastic about trying it again.
So the question is, how could it work?
There would have to be a gamer slant, marketed to the multiple gamers. 2-players against 2-players kind of thing where you want to encourage more communication.
Maybe a better and simpler solution would be to make a generic phone interface. Plug it into your 360 and then plug your Polycom into it. It wouldn't have to be developed by Microsoft as it could plug into the 360 unit itself and piggyback on to of the console's current architecture.
... so said 'Dan Nieuwland' on 01/31/2007 @ 08:10:40 AM [Direct Link]
Hey Dan. The idea is not meant to replace phones or compete with Skype and Vonage. In other words it isn't about turning the 360 into the household phone 'hub'.
Instead it is just like the wireless headset except it it has a speaker the entire room can listen to and microphone the entire room can talk to. The chat setup would be exactly the same as you see now on the 360; no changes required by Microsoft ... no dialing from the accessory.
You can market this as both a great video chat mechanism with family (which, at least for me, is better than crowding around a computer), or for use at a multi-location online gaming party.
The the former is where my interest lies. The Gamerscore blog entry is the exact kind of scenario I would love it for. Our family would use it every week.
... so said 'Joseph Molnar' on 01/31/2007 @ 09:29:50 AM [Direct Link]
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... so said 'Prorieexcilia' on 04/07/2009 @ 01:13:57 AM [Direct Link]