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Sony Demonstrates PS2 Video Conferencing
Thanks to GamesIndustry.biz for its article discussing Sony 's demonstration of a PlayStation 2 using a USB webcam to run a video-conference across the Internet, as showcased at the IPv6 Business Summit 2004 in Japan earlier this week. GI.biz points out that, although this conference was "about the IPv6 [Internet] protocol", according to their sources, "Sony has been encouraging developers to use the EyeToy webcam peripheral to add video communications to their online PS2 games - over the plain old IPv4 Internet - and it's expected that the first games to use the functionality could arrive before the end of the year." The article concludes that this move "would give Sony a technological lead over Microsoft", but is also "likely to raise a number of contentious issues - such as the possibility for abuse of the service."
There are a lot of features in games that go unused. This will probably be one of them. The resolution on most of these TVs will be too low to be good enough picture-in-picture and just think of how much it will slow the PS2 down to have to decompress the streams. The processor is already getting maxed out in many of these newer games anyway.
Just wondering if they're using H.323, SIP, or some home rolled beast to get this working...besides the codecs involved. I'm curious if this is setup to tie into an existing application/appliance or if they're exclusive to the PS2 itself.
If someone has a link to a white paper please post it!
I can't imagine sending voice with any network game I play already.
To send voice & video conferencing image during the game would just grind everything to hell.
Did people forget that U.S. broadband is no where close to 100Mbps.