PlayStation Eye: the SCEE USB camera unveiled

Friday 27th April 2007, 12:12:00 PM, written by Farid

One of the most obvious accessories that missed the PlayStation 3 launch was the EyeToy USB camera. Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (SCEE) corrected that situation yesterday when they announced the arrival of their PlayStation Eye.

This new USB cam is aimed to function with the future successors of the EyeToy: Play series, and their siblings, that SCEE calls "social gaming titles", with games that will support video chat and it will be an key element of future online services. The ever growing interest toward the Web 2.0 bubble and its social aspects amongst the game console manufacturers might leads us to believe that these “future services” SCEE talks about may be video sharing using Sony platforms such as Grouper or their new platform, which is still in beta form and thus is perfectly Web 2.0 compliant, eyeVio.

To this end, the PlayStation Eye will be bundled with the video and sound editing software, EyeCreate. The application will allow users to save videos, sounds and pictures taken with the USB camera, as well as to add effects to theses.

The technical specifications of the PlayStation Eye are the following:

• 4 channel audio input:16 bits/channel, 48kHz, SNR 90db
• 56º to 75º Field of View zoom lens
• 2.1 F-stop, <1% distortion, fixed focus (25cm to 8 at 75º FOV)
• 640 x 480 at 60 frames/second
• 320 x 240 at 120 frames/second
• USB2 high-speed data transfer
• Uncompressed video or optional JPEG compression

The higher framerate capability of this new camera will permit better sampling during motion detection tasks and thus benefit the games that use the motion detection capabilities of the camera. The API for this new peripheral should be short made available to developers.

It has to be said that while the original EyeToy was found to be compatible with the PS3, this new peripheral is meant to be the new and sole USB camera for the PS3. The PlayStation Eye is scheduled to be released this Summer in Europe, no price nor information concerning the release on other continents have been announced yet.

± sony, scee, eyetoy, playstationeye, webcam

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