It’s strange enough seeing a Microsoft game in Viva Pinata appear on the Nintendo DS, but imagine if there was some connectivity between the two platforms’ versions of the game. It also happened, reports MTV Multiplayer, thanks to the Xbox Live Vision camera.

Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise features Vision cam support that I’d label as a major gimmick: hold up a collectible Viva Pinata trading card, and the camera can read a code from the card and grant you something in game. When Rare told Stephen Totilo that this technology could also read codes off an iPod or a Zune, the pieces were there.

Microsoft has had trouble getting the kids market that Nintendo so effectively courts to buy kid-friendly Xbox 360 games, such as Viva Pinata. The DS is popular with kids. Rare just announced this month that a version of Viva Pinata for the DS has just been completed. The VP game on the DS seems like the perfect agent to sell the series to those Nintendo kids. And now, with this camera feature in the 360 sequel, Microsoft has a way to connect DS Pinata gamers to Xbox 360s, for actual gameplay incentives.

It’s simple; you’d have an image displayed on the DS, which you would hold up to the Vision cam, and there you go: the DS and 360 working together.

Unfortunately, while it turns out that the developers had worked on this, it was simply too late to implement the feature. A Trouble in Paradise developer said, “It’s one of those things where you just kick yourself.”

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Related Articles at Gaming Today:

• New Viva Piñata: Party Animals Screenshots
• Unconfirmed Viva Pinata DS Subtitle: Pocket Paradise
• Development on Viva Pinata DS is "Complete"
• Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise Gamer's Day Trailer
• Rare Staffer Unhappy with Microsoft’s Marketing of Viva Piñata