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Rare is working on a follow up to the commercially unsuccessful, albeit charming Viva Piñata this year. Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise will arrive in stores this September with a co-op mode for two gardeners. Thirty two new kinds of piñatas populate the magical island, which bumps the number of species (including troublesome sour piñatas) over 100.
The Xbox Live Vision camera and Piñata Vision can be used to collect some of them. The new feature enables players to show a physical piñata card with a proper barcode to the Vision camera to add content into the game. While it seems like Microsoft is going to sell or giveaway piñata cards (they probably are) a photo mode allows players to transfer their piñatas into sharable piñata cards. Obviously, user created piñata cards will have to be printed out and there aren’t any details about how this will happen. Microsoft might enable the piñata card image to be transferred to computer or maybe Microsoft plans on selling a tiny piñata card printer accessory.
Piñata Vision sounds pretty similar to the technology used in the Eye of Judgment, but Microsoft seems open to users redistributing content. Perhaps, Microsoft plans on selling additional object packs. These items allow players to transform the garden into a graveyard, pirate cove and a space center. Other objects like snow allow players to accommodate exotic piñata and some objects can even change the weather. Whether Microsoft chooses to sell objects remains unknown, but Viva Piñata had plenty of microtransaction purchases on the Xbox Live Marketplace the day the game arrived on store shelves.
Images courtesy of Microsoft.
