XBox Videoconferencing - 5 port Multipoint?

[Omni-Present]

http://www.conferencingnews.com/news/3816

Thoughts on the above Link?

XBox has plenty of horsepower in the hardware, but a built-in Peer-to-Peer MCU?

Josh Schade
Omni-Present

[Toney]

I think it's a great idea. Xbox has already gotten alot of people connected via their Live service and people are already using voice chat. It'll be a great way of bring videoconferencing into the mainstream and into homes. I hope they release it more widely.

[Keisuke Hashimoto]

I think that the release in Japan will be a test for Microsoft whether video chat will be a viable add-on for Xbox because they need to expand Xbox business and beat their competitors like PlayStation by Sony etc.. If this will go well and accepted in the game market in Japan, Microsoft will probably market this video chat add-on worldwide eventually.

I heard through the media here that the headquarters in Redmond initially doubted about the business feasibility of video chat for Xbox, but Japanese division of Microsoft was keen to do that and convinced the headquarters to launch that.

It was very much an idea from the Japanese division to add the video chat to Xbox.

So we will see how it will go.

[George]

Though this sounds like a cool idea I'd think it to be very distracting from actual game play. How or when would you have time in the middle of a Halo CTF fight to look at someone's ugly mug shot via video?