Sony and Microsoft both spent ample time during their respective E3 2009 press conferences to wow us with camera-based motion control, courtesy of the PlayStation Eye and Project Natal. But Sony’s “magic wand” tech isn’t exactly new. More »
Perhaps wanting to catch some of that crowd-pleasing lightning in a bottle from Nintendo’s fabulous E3 2008 keynote, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe reps showed off EyeToy Play: Hero at the Edinburgh Interactive Festival. The PlayStation 2 game, revealed earlier this Spring, is touted as having one-to-one motion sensing, a phrase we’ve heard bandied about often since Nintendo revealed the Wii MotionPlus add-on.
UK site DarkZero wrote up the first-person sword swinging adventure game’s on-stage demo, which utilised the fluorescent-green foam toy sword to interpret a player’s motions. That NERF-life sword comes packed in with the EyeToy Play sequel.
SCEE London sounded pretty proud of themselves for developing the tech, but we’d actually seen it in an EyeToy game before. An early version of Harmonix’s EyeToy Antigrav, a futuristic hoverboard game, was initially going to ship with bright green gloves to achieve the same effect. Ultimately, it didn’t, depriving us of fingerless glove ownership (again).
Sony to have 1:1 motion-tracking sword game by Xmas [Dark Zero]
At Sony Europe’s Gamers Day event, the company took care to emphasise the “social gaming” angle it’s pursuing. The company focused on “games where players of all ages socialise through gaming,” pointing out EyeToy products, puzzle titles and Buzz!: Quiz TV, where groups can play trivia games on a variety of topics over PlayStation Network.
The overall message seems to highlight the PS3′s diversity as an entertainment device, with the aim of appealing to an all-ages audience.
Full release follows the jump:
newVideoPlayer("PSeyetank22_gawker.flv", 463, 387,"kotakuwatermark.png"); We’ve seen videos of Sony’s Tank War Demo for the PS Eye before, and they looked really intriguing. But after having a hands-on today, I’m really excited over the simple tech demo.
The Wall Street Journal has an interesting, though sort dated, article on their site today about the increasing popularity of unusual, and simplistic controller for gaming.
The short article gives a nod to the Wii, the Power Glove, Guitar Hero, Rock Band and even brain-sensing helmets, but it doesn’t really get interesting until it starts talking about what Richard Marks, one of Sony’s games division researchers and father of the EyeToy, is up to.
The latest PlayStation.blog entry from EyeToy specialist Richard Marks—whose proper title is R&D Manager of Special Projects—shows of some intriguing new tech demos utilizing the new PlayStation Eye camera. It seems that someone’s been working on technology that will let PS Eye owners created their own levels by drawing shapes or placing real-life objects on a piece of paper.
While only one of the tech demos looks someone playable—a simple Lunar Lander-style mini-game controlled with the SIXAXIS—the others are still impressive. Take a gander and day dream of the possibilities.
Video of New Research Conducted with PlayStation Eye [PlayStation.blog] More »
Here’s how Sony’s EyeCreate software actually works. Predictably clean interface, nice big buttons, handy pop-up instructions, even what looks like simple drop-in sound effects/music. You, too, can be creating awful promo videos in no time flat! Click on the pic for a larger version, there’s another after the jump.
Sony has added the promised EyeCreate video editing software to the North American PlayStation Store today, a small 9MB download that will allow users to capture video, audio and photos, edit them, use special effects such as colour filters, distortions, art filters and motion trails, and export them to the PlayStation 3′s video folder. The software requires a PlayStation Eye camera, something most of us won’t have until The Eye of Judgment and the standalone retail version of the Eye arrive on store shelves this week.
I’m PlayStation Eye-less at this point, but fully plan on cobbling together sexy performances of “Hungry Like The Wolf”, saturated with comely air-clawing motions, when SingStar finally ships. More »
