Whoever is running Sony’s PR these days is certainly on the ball, gone are the days of bizarre adverts featuring circus clowns. In a PSMove (aha!) entirely unrelated to the launch of Kinect, Sony have released a video celebrating the PS2 camera EyeToy. You know, the one that was out years ago which did full body tracking.
I’m sure the timing of this video is entirely coincendental and not related to the Kinect launch at all. Lets hear what Senior researcher and creatore of EyeToy, Richard Marks has to say:
‘We really wanted to explore new gaming possibilities so we tried different things where you use your body in different ways – some things using your head, some using your hands, ‘ he said.
As I said, the timing of this video is entirely coincedental.
‘It seemed that we kept running into kind of a limit to the kind of game experiences you could do with just your body.We had some really fun things you could do but they tended to be shallow and kind of mini-game like’ continues Richard.
Just a fluke Sony launched this video today, honest.
‘With EyeToy we had the ability to select buttons with just your hands and that was kind of neat and magical, but actually got kind of tiresome.,’
Coincedence. Pure coincedence.
‘What we discovered was that people liked some of the demos we had where you actually held something in your hand as it was tracking that more precisely. These experiences gave us more gameplay opportunities.’
Richard Marks are you trying to suggest body tracking system limits the types of games you can make?
‘The biggest advantages we get with PlayStation Move is that it can be tracked very precisely. Unlike trying to track somebody’s body – everyone’s body is a little bit different – the Move is exactly the same in every way. It also works in the dark perfectly, and we’ve got sensors inside the move that gives us more precision.’
Source: US PS Blog
cc_star
EyeToy recognised about 3 nodes of a Skeletal structure, didn’t it? Kinect measures 47 in some applications.
Its about as comparable as the Master System joypad and a DualShock3. Still, good stuff by Sony adding fuel to the fanboy fire, rather than just sitting idly by and watching Kinect storm into the lead and into 5m household this Christmas
3shirts
That’s true, the Master System one was waaay better
colossalblue
EyeToy tracked two legs, two arms and your head. It certainly wasn’t as precise as Kinect claims to be but it did a decent enough job on the rare occasions someone developed for it.
I think the biggest limitation was the optics in the camera which need a good amount of light (and the right kind of light), similar to that awful camera that has been out for a while on the 360. It just doesn’t work properly in the “normal” lighting conditions of most people’s set-ups.
I don’t think it’s news to anyone that Sony started the ball rolling with camera-control and body-tracking but it’s certainly been built on and improved on by Microsoft’s newer, more expensive tech. Perhaps Sony should have done something with the tech they started to develop rather than forget about it for 5 years and then incorporate it into their Move system when motion control proved tremendously popular?
cc_star
I’m of the opinion that the PSEye (PS3) will be a severely limiting factor as the 2nd half of this generation plays out. I think Sony have missed an opportunity with the Move launch to upgrade the camera, of course it would have pissed PSEye customers like me off) But, in a years time or certainly in 2, 3 or even 5 years time a camera upgrade in some-way would have paid off, even if it was the addition of infra-red tech for better performance in non-absolutely perfect lighting which the PSEye needs because if its fractionally too light or too dark it just doesn’t work without the light-up pingpong balls, rather than going the whole hog of stereo camera’s for depth perception.
Nofi’s The Fight review hints at this with its sub-standard head tracking abilities – Although having never played The Fight I don’t know for myself, it was just my interpretation that if its limiting now, its gonna be crap in the future.
jimmy-google
I don’t think Sony are really planning to have a focus on the ps3 in 3 or 4 years time. It’ll be around but I fully expect a ps4 to be announced with that period. The ps3 is just turning 4. The 7 year period is normally when Sony release a new console.
Should the ps4 be more than 5 years away then Sony could always upgrade the camera’s later to extend the life cycle (and when the tachnology is a lot cheaper).
Can you imagine the reaction had they release £30 Move controllers with a £100 camera. It just wouldn’t have sold.
Galiophaurus
I have a feeling that in the “near” future, Sony will come out with a PSEye2 and even a PSMOVE controller2 (with directional joystick)
iAvernus
cc_star you’re saying that the PS Eye has limiting factors, but the Kinect doesn’t? The biggest buying factor for me is what games will there be for each system that’s supporting the technology in the next year to three years, and I CANNOT see Kinect beating Killzone 3. Even Heavy Rain is allot cooler with the Move. Yes the PS Eye is old, yes Sony should have brought out a new camera, but Move isn’t just going to be about shovelware in the next year will it?
I usually agree with all your comments, but you’re sounding like you’re bashing the Move JUST because of the old PS Eye, thought admitting you would have been p!ssed off to get a newer version if it came out.
“…it was just my interpretation that if its limiting now, its gonna be crap in the future.”
And the Kinect? If it’s crap now, what will the future hold?
Hoopiness
“it was just my interpretation that if its limiting now, its gonna be crap in the future”
CC, you could be talking about the product from either company with that statement. One of these products will never use camera only – having failed down that route before – and has a controller that ensures pretty much 1:1 tracking where it matters, whilst also making the lighting in the room pretty irrelevant. The other is a camera that doesn’t sound as revolutionary as they’d have us believe and has, from what I gather, been released in a fairly average state. I’m referring to responsiveness, accuracy, lag.
Whilst I’ve no doubt the latter will sell by the bucketload, I get the feeling that will be more down to marketing strategy and investment, rather than the technology being “must have” or breaking new ground.
Cadabena
I don’t have any problem with the Eye, and find it’s a very good camera for the money it costs, with a very high framerate in all lighting conditions. There might be a little noise on the picture in the dark, but that doesn’t matter for the Move. And there’s a friggin array mic built in to the thing! Definitely doesn’t need replacing.
cc_star
@iAvernus
“It’s crap now what, will the future hold.”
I’m assuming that, like me, and nearly everyone else except some reviewers and celebs, you’re still to play Kinect for a few hours, so that just seems a fanboyish to me, the reviews from people who have actually sunk some hours into are generally somewhere around ‘good’ with one ‘great’ and one ‘duffer’ which is probably to be expected with a new platform launch like Kinect/Move or a console.
You cannot see Kinect beating Killzone 3?
And, I can’t see that orange beating that apple.
Heavy Rain with Move seems to have a split opinion with just as many people saying its crap as there are people that prefer it.
I’m not bashing Move at all, I just feel given Nofi’s experience with The Fight’s headtracking and my own less than stellar experience of the PSEye with things like EyePet with precision-perfect lighting it requires, that over the lifespan that Sony would like PSMove to last, the actual Eye part of the Move setup could be limiting and can’t see that changing unless we’re tasked with wearing glowing ping pong balls on knee-straps and our head, or maybe an Andy Serkis motion capture leotard thing, and believe me I won’t look pretty in one of them.
The game experiences & genres possible that buttons provide, should more than make up any shortfall though, so yay for buttons and and yay for Move
Hoopiness
“the actual Eye part of the Move setup could be limiting and can’t see that changing unless we’re tasked with wearing glowing ping pong balls on knee-straps and our head”
Do you not think that if full body tracking was going to be of great importance to Sony’s vision of the Move, that they would have looked at this? As it is, the two systems are very different animals. One has a controller to provide more accuracy than anything else out there just now, so why would they suddenly put themselves in a hole and take a step backwards by placing more (or sole) reliance on the camera’s tracking abilities? The fact is, they won’t. Therefore, as long as the controller is there, the actual camera is a side issue because it works perfectly with the controller.
As colossalblue said, the eyetoy did a decent enough job at tracking on the occasions it was developed for, so to think that it will prove insufficient in the future is slightly premature at this stage. Especially in the face of you pulling someone else up for basing their opinion on what others are saying about kinect, yet you are basing this judgement on nothing but speculation yourself. With the right software, it will be more than sufficient. You automatically assume that the issue is the camera – which it may well be – yet don’t consider the fact it may be software failing to do some basic tracking that we’ve seen done on PS2 games to better effect?
Re the Kinect; from what I can gather even on these launch titles – which look like pretty simplistic gaming – there are issues with the control interface, the accuracy and lag. No matter how small they are, or how much people want to believe in the product (more accurately, how much MS want to spend on making people believe), these are issues that need addressing before you can even think about the prospect of playing anything the core gamers will want to go near. Before you tell me that MS are aiming at a new market, I know this.
Cort
In that video I see the EyeToy (development of which started in 1999) doing an awful lot of the things Kinect can do, things MS claimed in 2009 as revolutionary and never seen before. In parts of those videos, you are in the game and you are the controller. Sound familiar? Arguments about numbers of nodes are meaningless. What matters is what the hardware can do, and what experiences it can deliver. It’s perfectly reasonable (especially in the context of MS’ marketing strategy) to point out something’s been done before rather than “sit idly by” while Messrs. Molyneux, Greenberg and Tsunoda make false, hyperbolic statements which fly directly in the face of numerous videos of years-old gameplay footage on YouTube.
If there’s any harsh criticism due Sony on this subject, it’s how (yet again) they failed to capitalise on a brilliant piece of hardware that was the EyeToy. Even the PS Eye (which can do full body tracking, voice and speech recognition, face recognition, facial feature tracking, depth perception, video conferencing and has a microphone array – sound familiar?) languished around almost completely unused for nearly three years.
I think Kinect is a great piece of kit. But the fact is, it’s mostly just a big PS Eye which has gone down the (lack of) controller route Sony decided not to follow many years ago – rightly or wrongly.
Finally, this always make me chuckle: http://dualshockers.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/EyeToy_Kinetic_PS2.jpg
djdustb
Nice one Sony.
Dany2Step
Aha, your writing style is impeccable.
Sony do hate the tongue in cheek aproach.
Kamokazi-UK
Now if they worked this into an advert for move….
3shirts
Haha. I like it when companies have a little fun like this. It’s harmless ribbing and in the right spirit.
bunimomike
Agreed, matey. Feels like the right level of defusing the opposition. Same level as MS putting out the Forza Top Gear content. It’s a light dig.
Regardless of that I loved the video as I’m fascinated to see how the tech demos utilise Move and how that might transplant into actual games.
Regarding Kinect – the biggest problem I have is, in a way, the same as the Wii. So many of the titles seem gimmicky and/or shallow. Novelty (for me) seems to wane incredibly quick.
SpikeyMikey23
same! the novelty factor is so short! not worth the cash. i feel the same way about move
jayjay119
‘EyeToy recognised about 3 nodes of a Skeletal structure, didn’t it? Kinect measures 47 in some applications.’
And yet kinnect still works like a bag of crap with some games… hardly the biggest promotion theme you want.
mcphatty
Is that an old Eye Toy game called Kinect about 50 seconds into the video? Shameless, but bloody funny. Well done PS Blog you’re now as jouvenile as 50% of the internet.
Kevling
It’s Eye Toy: Kinetic, not Kinect. As in a real word, not a made up one ;)
mcphatty
Ahhh thanks for spotting that, damn dislexyha.
tonycawley
Lol. Clever. Putting Kinect down without explicitly stating it. Good work.
cam the man
Sony should do a lot more of that.
Jimster71
Funny but Kevin Butler should have been doing the vid. The kinect launch has been done much better than the move launch irrespective of the capabilities of each hardware platform. Sony could learn a thing or two from it.
chibber
I like how 52 seconds in the even manage to get the word Kinect in there showing the EyeToy Kinect game. Kind of says “we even did the name first”
cc_star
Kinetic?
When the Kinect name was announced I always read it as Kinetic in my head until just recently.
Jimster71
A video gaming friend of mine thought it was Kinetic as well.