Wave goodbye to EyeToy, say hi to PlayStation Eye

It's cool looking and all that, but I see it and think "these are not the droids I'm looking for."

Johnny #5????

It's hideous.

Oh GOD.. if they have face recognition, they must be able to recognise and filter crotches and genitals... i dont need to be seeing when im playing flOw.

U L G Y You ain't got no alibi, you ugly!

Looks like a logitech webcam with a bad rectangle afro

Yay, more peripherals to detract from the console's actual use, PLAYING VIDEO GAMES. Good work Sony.

im a playstation hater, but i'll admit that that thing looks nice.

i was just thinking recently about, what if microsoft released a microphone i could place near my tv so that i wouldnt have to use a headset.

looks like this is exactly what i wanted, but unfortunately its coming to playstation. oh well, i hope it works well and is priced reasonably.

Wow....no more HD? I smell trouble in whythefuckwontitrecognizemycardineyeofjudgement land...

Seriously, I would rather 720p @ 30fps and 640 @ 60fps than the 640@60/320@120 combo. This is going to be the whole EyeToy nightmare all over again without HD. Guess we'll have to wait until PS4 before we can use an EyeToy that knows the difference between our shadows and our bodies....

I was really looking forward to this and I am quite disappointed. :(

I really cant see the use for this apart from making videos for.... nothing. At least the 360 has face recognition (in 1 game though).

Not sure if I would want something that bulky sitting on top of my TV.

@ #2 That's the first thing I thought too.

"Playstation Eye is Alive!!"

And for you young-ems who have know idea what we're talking about.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_Circuit_%28film%29

Yay! Another product that won't work worth a shit! REJOICE!


Oh, and Short Circuit rocks. But I always liked Batteries Not Included better.

It's like part 2 of the "I'm a Mac" ad where PC gets a webcam taped to his head... and then the webcam gets a speaker taped to its head. In part three, the speaker will get a credit card swiper taped to its head so Sony can bill you by the minute for its use.

what the fuck is the speaker for? can't my tv handle audio? I have an idea lets just throw $35 on the ground and set it on fire! like all my friends with the vision cam...

I don't think that's a speaker. I do believe it's a wide-array microphone, Starfish. What's sad is that Sony just had to take the word "Toy" off of the name to make it seem as though they aren't childish but when in doing so shows something quite contradictory.

Oh, and do to add: We just need to see if Sony lied to everyone about this being an IP camera, being that you could set this up anywhere and view it anywhere around the world, no matter where it is, through your PS3.

cant u just wait to see that 640 x 480 goodness streched over your 1080p 50" Screen....

thats going to be sexy.....

I think you'll find its a microphone, not a speaker. As for whats its for...well Singstar is one pretty obvious use. Then there's that odd game Eye of Judgement.

RoroCo, Thats exactly what I was thinking!

Im sure it will be cool, but it is fugly.

@liqwid

"Toy" off of the name to make it seem as though they aren't childish but when in doing so shows something quite contradictory."

Who told you that?
I hate people like you, because you presume stuff thats not implied.
SOny never said that, nor has any exec insuitated that, yet you posts it like its fact.

Theres no proof of what your saying, stop making stuff up as you think is what happened. their are millions of reasons why the new name was changed, maybe its because it does more than the eye toy does, but neither of us truly know why, so lets not pretend like we do.

One photo is not exactly enough to be sure, but it seems to me like that flat base is fixed. Doesn't seem like the best attachment option when more and more people have flat screen displays of one kind or another...

To Sony:

Your a stupid fucking company. You had me buy a $600 ""HD"" console so "I" could play movies and shit in HD. What the fuck is this non-HD camera shit? If buy a ""HD"" console that means I want ""HD"" add-ons as well.

Hey ive played the hell out of UNO online. Theres always some goofy people in there and its good for a laugh. I hope PS3 adds that fun to the little camera.

@ Kelvin
Wow man way to whine for Sony. Anybody that has any logical sense can follow the trail and come to a reasonable deduction (Yes that's a valid use of logic) that that's the reason Sony did that. You say "maybe its because it does more than the eye toy does", that is beside the point. When does a product update make a rebranding necessary. They could have simply called it the "Eyetoy 2" or the the "Eyetoy HD" (... oh wait) The point is a drop of the word toy was not necesarry and therefor was done for a reason. I wonder what that was hmmmm...

Good Sony news:

I saw Ridge Racer 7 (obligatory over-exaggeration on the letter "i") today and I. Want. It. Bad.

Laughable Sony news:

Uk Games store "Game" has an offer currently going- Trade in your OLD consoles for the PS3. You'll get a trade-in value of £170 if you bring in an Xbox 360 and £120 for a Wii!

Bad Sony news:

That cam is fugly.

And now over to Tom for the weather.

@ Kelvin

do u seriously think they would admit that they changed to name to not make them look childish??

you seriously think that?

God how I yearn for the day the word "gay" isn't used by idiots as an insult.

So this camera offers is not HD?! That's so gay...
Sorry, that's so "sheppy".
Another lie and undelivered promise by Sony!

fu

A HD console should have a HD camera! I spent $600 for the damn console. $100 for a HD camera wouldn't be shit.

Also I think they should have went with a higher resolution at lower frames per socond.

Your eyes only see at ~25 fps, so anything above that really is ok. Not saying that you don't get (a very) slightly better image at higher Htz, but it really doesn't matter much.

But of course we're going to have someone say, "WE NEEDZ iT 2B REFRESHIN @ 120 FRAMES PER SECOND!!!!1!!1 FOR MAXIMUM QUALITY!!!1"

@Jack of No Trades

I think in order to make the camera HD ready, it would probably cost another $600. o.O

@Jack of No Trades

I think in order to make the camera HD ready, it would probably cost another $600. o.O

@ Todd

not really sen as 1.3mp is about 720p.... and i can probobly pick up a 1.3mp cam for pennys nowdays lol

And people said the HD DVD drive was ugly.

The ultimate in soul-stealing technology...

"So this camera offers is not HD?! That's so gay...
Sorry, that's so "sheppy".
Another lie and undelivered promise by Sony!"

What is it today with people flaming me? Are you people so cranky today because your stepfather didn't give you his special loving last night or something?

http://www.oreillynet.com/mac/2004/11/23/graphics/isight.jpg

Seriously, back when these things weren't built into all Macs, they were damn cool. Sony, you're gonna copy the name, why not copy the important stuff?

Um, question.

Its 2007....why dose it have a microphone that big!?!

Seriously, that is a 1997 microphone. WTF?

For a webcam 640x480 is a pretty high-resolution, especially at that capture rate. Would people wanting true HD (720p or above) from a webcam be willing to fork over the big bucks it would likely cost? If you do a quick search on ebay for 720p webcams you'll find a rather large shortage! If you widen your search to 720p video cameras in general, you'll see they go for about $500.

As for the 'speaker', yes, it's an array of 4 microphones which should allow for groovy things such as location detection of audio sources (e.g. your voice) and filtering out all but one audio source from many.

Both the high fps and the mic's functionality could lead to some pretty nifty and novel gameplay elements... We'll have to see what the developers make of it.

Shep, it's because people don't like you and you're a hypocrite.

For example, you moan that people who use "gay" for derogatory comments are idiots, but then you retort with a gay stepfather innuendo.

@32

I think you'll find that those cameras don't capture video in HD. Still image != video

Also, while an HD camera would have been cool for video chat or something, it's rather obvious most of you are clueless. Why all this talk about stretching a 640x480 image onto a widescreen TV? That's not how a camera is used in most games. The video is usually shown in a small box on part of the game screen. Why would you expect the camera to fill up the entire screen when playing a game? That makes no sense. Where would the game itself be?

i like the ability to change the setting of the camera's lens from hot to cold by twisting it... very nice.

@ Vidikron, on most Eye toy games you take up most of the screen.....

so obviously a better quality cam would look and run better.

and seen as the webcams are 640 x 480, it WOULD strech across a big ass screen... and would look shitty

Wow - that is the ugliest looking sorry excuse for a piece of hardware I've ever seen in my life. I'd seriously take the gyroscoping robot over that goofy thing.

Props if it can actually work with a game.

Thumbs down if video editing is just one other thing your'e supposed to do with this console that doesn't have anything to do with gaming, along with playing virtual house, running linux, folding@home and watching movies.

Viva La Sheppy.

@42

What makes you think it's not simply going to place the image in the middle of the screen unstretched? I think the bottom line is that an HD video camera would be too expensive.

@ Vidikron, its stupidly obvious they wont.....

They wont make dedicated webcam games and then crop the thing into a small box so u have to squint to see what you are doing on screen.....

@ ixalon #38: 720p is about 1 megapixel. I ask you this: type in "megapixel webcam" on eBay and see how many results you get. What's that? You get lots? And how cheap are they? Whoa! $8!

I'm not shocked at the low specs. I don't know if EyeToy games were big sellers, but it seemed to me like that should have been a BIG Wii-like breakthrough for them. They just didn't care enough to break the EyeToy out of the "child ghetto" that gameboy used to occupy. Think of the health benefits angle that Nintendo used, their family angle, the excitement from even college-aged gamers. Sony didn't need a knock-off motion sensor, they could have done the entire Wii lineup with a better eyetoy and some colorful accessories.

But with their current priorities they need a cheap camera for affordable game bundles, maybe SingStar and who knows? PlayStation "EyeSports" someday? That's why this is so cheesy, and why they added in the mic.

I am shocked at the business decision here. They have demonstrated the success of their cell phone "Walkman" and "CyberShot" lines and told their stockholders that they were going to do this on their gaming stuff. This doesn't seem to line up with that.

As for HD, even the MIGHTY ps3 has some issues with HD content - the tiny default HDD is one of them. Plus, how easy is Sony going to make it for people to point their PSEye at a HDTV and capture BluRay Spiderman to their HDD? Silliest rumor of the year, hands down.

just a thought...
sony (and others?) already have hd cams on the market with er... usb connectivity...
has anyone tried using one of these as a web cam?

@47

Ummm... that $8 webcam runs 10-15 FPS at that resolution and only does 30 FPS at 640x480.

@45

I still think you are wrong. I don't think the image will be stretched like that. I think it might be resized to take up the middle of the screen, but will maintain its original aspect ratio. Sure, it wont look as good as a true HD video cam, but I think people are making a much bigger deal outof this then needed. What's absurd is that if they had made an HD camera and charged $200 for it everyone would be bashing them because of the price. Can't have it both ways.