Sony presented Eyetoy among their earlier PlayStation, now, after they upgraded their console, its time to upgrade the camera. They call it Playstation Eye. With a design specifically meant to take advantage of the social aspects of online gaming, as well as some peripheral features such as face-mapping, the new Eye trumps the previous camera.

Included on the camera itself is a “sophisticated microphone” that can reduce background noise and has the capacity for improved speech recognition and transfer. To amend problems with the original camera’s sensitivity to light conditions, this new peripheral has been designed to perform regardless of lighting condition, and offers a bunch of different capture modes like slow motion and time-lapse. An improved frame rate will help with the response time and tracking features of the camera, while zoom options will be available to capture the proper image.

The most interesting part of the camera, though, is the ability to capture video and audio directly to the PS3’s HDD and then edit it with the bundled EyeCreate software. In conjunction with the web browser that we know is able to upload files from the hard drive, this may create quite the little soapbox for gaming and YouTube aficionados. The price isn’t announced yet, neither the games who support it. only thing we know for sure its going to get released this summer.

Technical specifications:

-- 4 channel audio input:16 bits/channel, 48kHz, SNR 90db

-- 56 degree or 75 degree Field of View zoom lens

-- 2.1 F-stop, < 1% distortion, fixed focus (25cm to 8 at 75 degree 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

What they do in big, they sure do in small too. For everyone’s surprise, Sony have also produced a camera for PlayStation Portable, their hand

held console. This one’s called Go!Cam and it will be released on May 16th in Europe. It will allow either 2.5 hours of video recording time or up

to 40,000 photos per 4 gig memory stick, and includes a built in microphone and a vertically tilting lens to change the direction both toward the user and away (180 degrees).

The €49.99 ($68) price tag will also include Go!Edit, Sony’s bespoke editing software which allows for portable editing of both photos and video, with sound and graphic effect enhancements, as well as the ability to upload Go!Cam creations to the internet directly from the PSP itself.

Anyways, these products are very awaited and wanted, especially between those who were fans of the EyeToy. I still prefer DDR though=)

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