MS enabling vidcap for all 360 games?

By Robert Purchese Published 5 October, 2009

Working on it, says report.

Microsoft may be developing a tool that enables all Xbox 360 games to capture and share video clips.

"We'd love to have video capture in our game, but why work on something that the platform holder is already developing?" an anonymous developer revealed to Kotaku.

Nothing else was said on the subject, and Microsoft's Scott Austin wouldn't comment directly when approached by the blog.

He did say, however, that it was safe to assume that numerous ideas were in testing at Microsoft.

"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."

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (33) Latest comment 2 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Wolverfrog #1 2 years ago

    So basically, they've decided to take Bungie's render to video idea and apply it to the entire Xbox?

  • Zomoniac #2 2 years ago

    What do the publishers have to say about this? Given that any direct-capture feed of a game is yanked from YouTube by the publishers within seconds (all the FC runs on RB2 have to be off-screen cam clips now to avoid MTV having a fit), MS might have to do some persuading, or will they make it a new term of the license? Hopefully.

  • Vice.Destroyer #3 2 years ago

    If that was the differential between Gold and Silver, that would be awesome. I wouldn't even mind if they stuck it all on YouTube. Imagine that.

  • davisorle #4 2 years ago

    Even if I wouldnt use it personally ( maybe till a couple of years ago I might be interested but now I dont spend so much time on gaming eitherway :S ) having extra services is always a good thing. Still remember how cool it was when I was first capable to put my own music on racing games etc on the first Xbox.

  • penhalion #5 2 years ago

    @Zomoniac

    The MTV thing is down to music rights issues. Playing rockband on youtube actually goes against the license for the music. This isn't true of any other genre of game.

  • Dizzy #6 2 years ago

    It makes sense... MS has been very good at integrating common features into their platform. TBH I would prefer some kind of standard "clan" support.

  • bad09 #7 2 years ago

    Could be interesting, I had great fun recording and watching vids on Halo 3 and I've heard you can record fights on SF4 for pc, but I haven't played with that yet.

  • skillian #8 2 years ago

    This is a great idea. On every games system (including PC, why can't we do this yet?) you should be able to push a button and geta video of your last minute of play.

    Even if it's not for YouTube, I'd quite like to have a greatest hits compliation video of some of my favourite gaming moments.

  • altitude2k #9 2 years ago

    This would make your life a little easier, eh EG?

  • skillian #10 2 years ago

    EG already have the ability to take screenshots but don't use those - I'd imagine all video would have to be publisher approved also.

  • Britesparc Verified Creative, ITV #11 2 years ago

    This would be pretty cool. I especially like taking screenshots, rather than video - if they could do that (with a posable camera like in Halo or PGR) that'd be awesome.

  • Ranger101 #12 2 years ago

    That'd be great for SF4 matches.

  • Xerx3s #13 2 years ago

    "TBH I would prefer some kind of standard "clan" support. "

    This. It's mindboggling that they have the whole shebang but almost make it a point to not have cross game clan / group support. Now that would be a real feature. Clan leaderboards, clan statistics, clan achievements, clan matches, the options are endless.

    I don't give a shit about clans but it's very odd that they still don't have such a feature, especially since they demonstrated it behind closed doors years ago.

  • Xerx3s #14 2 years ago

    "EG already have the ability to take screenshots but don't use those - I'd imagine all video would have to be publisher approved also."

    Which makes one wonder about the level of independence of articles if true.

  • Zomoniac #15 2 years ago

    What would be really, really brilliant, is if FIFA 11 saved the play data for your last few matches (including online ones) Halo 3-style, so you could compile some match highlights (from the proper broadcast cam the replays are shown in, not the inferior one we have to use normally), complete with slo-mo replays, and upload them with commentary. Make a proper MOTD style 4-minute highlights of an online cup final that everyone else in the tourney could watch. Would be great.

  • Eraysor #16 2 years ago

    Very nice idea. Hopefully it'll record constantly, holding on to the last five minutes or so of play, so you can rewind if you do something unexpectedly epic.

  • Shadders #17 2 years ago

    Sounds AWESOME! It'd make a great adition to the perks of gold membership too.

  • GamesProgrammer Verified Games Team Programmer, Eutechnyx Ltd. #18 2 years ago

    I really doubt this would just be an OS thing that would work across all games, sounds more like a lib that developers could choose to include in there game, similar to the YouTube one that sony provide to PS3 developers.

  • Spekingur #19 2 years ago

    It could work just like FRAPS does.
    I would love this with L4D - why isn't there a match recording thing with L4D?

  • skillian #20 2 years ago

    I would love this with L4D - why isn't there a match recording thing with L4D?

    There is - Source Recorder is built into all Source engine games.

    Just open up the console and type: record [DEMO NAME], then just type: stop to stop recording. You can then watch it back from within the game or convert it to a video.

  • vegard #21 2 years ago

    NOTE TO MICROSOFT:

    Please focus your efforts on improving the music player instead. Thank you for your time.

  • RedSparrows #22 2 years ago

    Cool, hope this appears sometime!

    and

    'This. It's mindboggling that they have the whole shebang but almost make it a point to not have cross game clan / group support. Now that would be a real feature. Clan leaderboards, clan statistics, clan achievements, clan matches, the options are endless. '

    = truth.

  • Spekingur #23 2 years ago

    @skillian: Thank you!

  • dsmx #24 2 years ago

    Except Wolverfrog it wasn't bungie's idea. I now for a fact that bf2 had that way before halo 3 did.

  • Machiavellian #25 2 years ago

    I believe the reason there has not been clan support so far is the limit to the amount of friends you can have within the 360. As I remember this limit is due to the huge amount of people still playing Halo on the original Xbox which is stalling an upgrade to the service.

  • Underdoseuk #26 2 years ago

    I would have this feature over facebook any day

  • carrotcake #27 2 years ago

    This was always the plan. I thought it was going to be one of features available when 360 launched. Read it somewhere. Also video chat was mentioned years ago. Got that now but I guess not many games support it

  • butler` #28 2 years ago

    £15 and you can record straight on to a PC in pretty decent quality anyways.

    Times that by 10 and you get full HD 1080i recordings.

  • man.the.king #29 2 years ago

    @evilfoxhound

    "Isn't this feature supposed to be in the next PS3 update too? (According to internet rumblings) "

    To be honest, I would like both platforms to have this feature - my reasoning is simple. We should be able to capture and upload/share game moments. When uploaded, others should be able to view this, and this could hopefully also be used as some sort of "help" or "guide" system. So if you are stuck, you can search for possible help by tags or game names, and you should have a list of possible game videos. In my view, that's a very big plus (as I tend to get stuck in games sometimes :) ).

  • miiiguel #30 2 years ago

    What's the difference between this and what Halo 3 and ODST already do?

  • metalangel #31 2 years ago

    @vegard: Just curious, how? I use it every day and apart from a minor annoyance (unless I go into the Music Library to tell it to start playing, it doesn't always add all the tracks on my HDD) I have no problem with it.

  • Arwin #32 2 years ago

    Probably not a coincidence that PS3's youtube support in SDK gains popularity? ;)

    If they pull it off for all games though though, kudos!

  • vegard #33 2 years ago

    @metalangel

    there's a couple of things that annoy me. if i try to randomly play any song located on my computer, the xbox uses forever to make up a playlist (never bothered to wait until it actually finishes). i'd also like a "add to playlist" button, better id3-tag support and cd-cover support.

    edit: there IS an "add to playlist" button...but the rest still stands, navigating through a big mp3 collection is very troublesome.
    Edited by 1 at 06/10/09 @ 11:49