These tests were followed up with the use of physical props and visual effects such as flame effects. Marks and his son interacting with full-screen water surface distortion effects. The aggregate effect was reminiscent of spiders clinging to his body parts. He was able to drag and move clumps of these asterisks from his face to his hands.
The test showed some faults - which he soon incorporated as features. Marks using his body to interact with asterisks projected onto a three-dimensional virtual representation of his head. Spangler showed early demo video recordings of EyeToy prototypes, beginning with a very early video test called the "Spiders" demo. Marks met with Phil Harrison at the 1999 Game Developers Conference, and the two determined that the PlayStation 2 hardware spec was a good match to allow for real-time video game processing. He grew up selling video games at retail, and carried his interest in gaming through his doctoral research at Stanford, where he used video interfaces to control real-time interaction with robotics systems.ĭr. Richard Marks of Sony Computer Entertainment America. The GameCity presentation also highlighted the work of Dr. Sony would like to claim that at the time, the EyeToy created a new genre of game play, coined "physical and social gaming." The results were consistent across gender and age groups, and were generally more positive for viewers of the interaction as well as the participants.
Interestingly, as first- and third-party Wii peripherals have gained acceptance, the current crop of EyeToy releases will make use of physical props such as pom poms and swords after all - like with the next EyeToy title, Pom Pom Party - to allow for a more first-person game play experience.įor earlier EyeToy development, the goal was to allow the player to use their body to interact with game interfaces, as well as with game play modes.ĮyeToy developers made the initial decision to use a camera representation of the player primarily because of accessibility testing indicated that people immediately grasped the control and interface when they were able to see themselves and receive immediate feedback from their on-screen actions.
PLAYSTATION 3 GAMES WORK ON PS2 EYE TOY GAMES SOFTWARE
To date, sales have been quite successful - more than 10.5 million PS2 EyeToy cameras have been sold worldwide.Īnd as the PlayStation 2 still retains its significant user base while the PS3's progress is slower, Sony has powerful incentives to continue to support PS2 peripherals like EyeToy.Īt the recent GameCity event in Nottingham, Sony's Sandy Spangler gave a presentation on the history of the EyeToy, discussing how software development for the peripheral would be aimed at putting the player in the game world, rather than making use of physical props. Sony's EyeToy project started out as a visual controller prototype that used a USB camera to try and achieve controller-free interaction with the PlayStation 2, bundled at launch with the EyeToy: Play minigame collection.