Rare considered DS / Xbox 360 connectivity for Viva Pinata

We thought our world had gone a bit surreal when we first played Sonic Advance on the GBA shortly after Sega gave up on the hardware market. Things got even weirder when Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games came along and united the two historic rivals in the same game, as if it was the most natural thing in the world - like Fidel Castro and George W. Bush going for a sly pint down the pub together.

Now it's all starting again. Rare's Justin Cook, talking to MTV Multiplayer, has admitted Rare very nearly included a feature in its upcoming DS game Viva Piñata: Pocket Paradise which would have made it compatible with the camera feature in Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise on Xbox 360.

Says Cook: "We got it to work, but it was too late in the development cycle. It's one of those things where you just kick yourself."

This camera feature is used in the 360 game to allow players to scan codes from collectible Viva Piñata trading cards, which then unlock in-game characters.

During a recent Microsoft press event, Cook mentioned the camera would also be able to read codes displayed on video screens on devices such as iPods or Zunes.

It was afterwards, when asked if the company had considered making this compatible with the new DS game, that it became clear Rare had not only considered but implemented it, just too late for it to make it into the finished game.

Our minds boggle at the thought that Microsoft would be willing to include Nintendo DS support in any of its titles. Although there was a time near the launch of Xbox 360 when Microsoft's Peter Moore was unfathomably positive about Nintendo's Wii and was even quoted as saying: "The innovation that the Wii is, I'm certainly a big fan of."

Shocking. We're not sure where all this friendliness between hardware companies has come from, but we're not so sure we like it. Can't we all just go back to the fanboy days of slagging off other people's choice of console please? At least we knew where we were then.