Djöfulls snilld verður það, hér er smá um það:

EyeToy is a technology/peripheral which will be shipping later this year in Europe. While Sony Computer Entertainment America hasn't commented on a possible US release yet, we've certainly got our fingers crossed. Sony Computer Entertainment Europe's plan is to ship a game along with a normal digital camera (like an inexpensive webcam) at the price of a normal title, so there are no additional peripheralcosts. You place the camera on your TV set in your direction and off you go.
The camera is used to track your movements. You don't need a controller, just your arms and legs as you stand in front of the TV screen. The game that will ship with the camera in Europe is a set of minigames which make use of the EyeToy technology. Imagine a music game where notes shoot from the centre to each of the four corners on the screen in rhythmic patterns. Now, instead of pushing “up-left, down-right” on your controller, you move your arm in that direction. Or your leg, mind you. You don't need to hold any controller or other device that tracks your movements. The camera is all you need and the rest is physical movement.

Sounds exciting? We've played a few of the minigames and they're absolutely addictive. The best part is that it actually doesn't matter whether you're a gaming pro or a complete beginner, because since there's no controller anymore, you don't need to worry about pushing the right buttons. Now it's all about simple hand-eye coordination, on the basic level that anyone possesses.

Could Sony Computer Entertainment Europe be in the process of broadening the horizons of gaming? We sat down with Jason Fitzgerald of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe's London studio at a European event a little while ago with plenty of food and drinks to find out all there is to know about EyeToy.

Gamers.com: EyeToy is extremely impressive. For how long have you been working with this technology?

Jason Fitzgerald: We spent a year working on pure technology, figuring out what the camera was good at, what type of game you could do better than with a normal controller. We really wanted to do something that was better. It's not enough to do something where the camera is just a gimmick but it would be better playable if you used a controller.

For example, if we did a driving game where you control the car by moving your hands as if you were holding a steering wheel it wouldn't be nearly as good as GT3 with the GT steering wheel. So we've spent the last year purely on research and development and the year before that on getting the camera working. So altogether now it's been more than two years. And we hope to have a product out by summer (in Europe) but we're also already working on the next game after that, because we're thinking about what else could be done with this technology. The camera could be very important for PlayStation 2 and for attracting new types of gamers. We don't want to do one single game. We have a long term plan.

Gamers.com: The first demo we've seen around a year ago required that the player would hold a yellow or red marker so the camera could track the movement. Is that no longer required?

JF: No. There are two types of movement tracking the camera can do. It can do color tracking and it can do movement tracking. The minigames we're working on are really simple and really easy to play. We thought that people like having the freedom of not holding a controller, or a specially colored ball to be able to play. People like that. So the first minigame product will certainly be about tracking movement. And this makes for something really social and fun. It's also fun to watch. A bit wacky. A bit mad, but a perfect party game. And that's what the first EyeToy game will be.

However, we could do a game tracking color and we're currently looking at other things we can do further down the line. We can do that with the same camera. Tracking color allows you to be a lot more active because while movement is only recognizable in 2D (x- and y-axis), the color adds a dimension because it can also be tracked in the z-axis. For example, if you have a yellow ball, the camera can be told what the default size of the ball is. If the ball is pushed away the camera can tell because the ball is smaller since it's further away. So it's basically a 3d tracking of your movement. But there are two problems. First, you have problems tracking a red ball if someone is wearing a red shirt. And second, just like I said, people don't really want to hold something. They want freedom. That's why the first game just is about tracking movement.

Gamers.com: When we've played the dance minigame, Samba De Amigo from Sega came to our minds, where you had to shake the maracas.

JF: (laughs) Samba De Amigo is definitely an influence on us. We looked at Samba De Amigo and said: `This an amazing mainstream game. This is a game that absolutely everyone can play.' I mean, you know how it is. Your girlfriend who never plays games would come around and you show her Samba De Amigo and she loves it. But the problem with Samba De Amigo was the price point. It limited the market only to hardcore gamers because only a hardcore gamer is willing to spend a 150$ on a game like that. So it was a mainstream game but at a hardcore gamer's price point. And we're very keen not to make that mistake which is why we're releasing EyeToy in a bundle with a regularly priced game. This means though that it's not a very profitable thing for Sony to do but in the long term it works for the brand and the PlayStation 2 as a console to invite new gamers to play.

We think that a lot of people are put off by the pain you have to go through to get to know the buttons when you first pick up gaming. And particularly, if you are a hardcore gamer and I'm not and I come around to your house and you say `let's play a game' and we play a football game, then you beat me by the dozens. I would just be looking down at the buttons, trying to get used to pressing the right buttons. You would laugh at me and say: `you're rubbish, man' and it would be embarrassing for me. To get me into gaming is to be able to play with you, a hardcore gamer, on a level playing field. And EyeToy offers that. Because even if you're trained in how to use a button, that won't help you much if you have to move your hands and body so we're both starting from scratch. So it's more about real life skills that you take from real life into the game, like how good your hand-to-eye coordination is or how good you are at listening to music, and so on.

Gamers.com: Yeah, there are so many persons (e.g. parents or girlfriends) who are afraid of trying out a game simply because they are not used to the controls.

JF: Exactly. It was the same with my girlfriend. She didn't like videogames until the day I brought EyeToy home with me. She loved it. So it actually does the job of attracting a new audience. And what I'd like to think EyeToy can be is, when you have a party or you're all going out, you have people coming to your place, some of them gamers and some of them totally unfamiliar with games. EyeToy can be something to entertain people, something that both types of persons could play together, for example for 10 minutes before you go to a club, or after a club when you come home to chill out. Because most of the time, when you come back home and say to your girlfriend `let's play a game together' she'd laugh at you and say `go away, forget it'. (laughs)

Gamers.com: Another minigame you showed was named “Wishywashy,” where you had to clean a window together by moving your hands accordingly. Then there was a dance game named Beat Freak and a Kung Fu type game which also looked hilarious. (laughs)

JF: Yeah, it basically has ninjas coming towards the middle of the screen and you have to punch them away. It has ten stages. Then there's a bonus level so you can get some bonus points in which you have to crack wood in typical karate-manner. And at the end there's a boss. Those three games are completely different types of games, if you think about it. The kung fu game is very traditional game format: ten levels, bonus levels, bosses. It has this arcade look, similar to games like Double Dragon. But the window-washing game is completely different. It only has a timer, so the game lasts for 60 seconds, no matter if you're good or bad. Just try to wipe as many screens as possible. It's very simple. It's more of a quick blast. Beat Freak has two tracks: easy and hard. Each track is around a minute and a half long.

Gamers.com: We spotted Moloko's “Sing It Back” in the game so far, which also was featured in Konami's Beatmania series before. Will it be in the final game too?

JF: Moloko's song is one song that will also be in the final game, yes. Our opinion is that the music we pick has to be music everyone knows. And “Sing It Back” from Moloko is one of the songs. You know, this is the kind of game your friends will make you play, regardless of whether you want to or not. So there's no excuse not to. (laughs).

Gamers.com: It's ideal for teasing someone into it. ‘You think you’re better? Prove it!'

JF: Exactly. We have some really fun stuff planned, for example that you have the ability to put various faces in, so you could take a photo into the game of a friend of yours, and do things to it. For example, you know that (real life) game where you play with a football and try to keep it up in the air for as long as possible by kicking it with your head, shoulders or feet, right? We have a game like that too, with the exception that you can put a snapshot of a friend of yours onto the ball, so you can kick him around. It's really a lot of fun.

Gamers.com: Do you have any other planned minigames you can already talk about?

JF: Well, we don't have fun names yet for them (laughs) but another one would be a boxing game. We're just not happy with the names yet. And another one is Juggling UFO, which is really…uhh… out there. In another one you have to spin plates and have to keep them all going and they're on poles. Little drunk monkeys are trying to climb up the poles to knock the plates off. That's pretty much out there as well, I mean, it's got drunk monkeys in there. Hello? (laughs)

Gamers.com: Who the heck came up with that?

JF: (laughs) One of the designers. One of the wacky bunch. It wasn't me! I promise! I still don't know why they came up with that. But they did. And it's good. It's just the team. For example we have a Japanese lead artist…

Gamers.com: …which explains some of the anime influence in the game, presumably.

JF: Yeah exactly. It's a fairly international team with a lot of different ideas. The technology is coming from America, the lead artist is from Japan and the rest of the team is European really with people from the UK, Portugal, France. It's a nice mix. The lead artist from Japan, she actually was the designer of Beatmania from Konami. She designed the arcade cabinet. So she has experience with this idea of physical gaming and she brings a nice Japanese style to the game as well. A lot of people look at the game and say ‘oh that’s cool, must be Japanese' because it's wacky, different and it has new technology. But we take that as a compliment, because if you think about it, most of the creative original ideas and new concepts come from Japan.

Gamers.com: Also, you would imagine that the technology is something coming from Sony Japan since they experiment a lot with new technologies.

JF: Absolutely. They also have generally more peripherals in Japan. Guitar games and all that stuff. The Japanese consumers seem to like peripherals more than European consumers for example. Europeans and Americans want to know that they're not buying a peripheral just for a single game. So EyeToy should be interesting for them, since it basically comes for free with the game, and there are many more games coming.

For example, we will be releasing the technology and drivers to other developers too so they can start creating games for EyeToy. Other developers might use the camera more traditionally, for example in a first person shooter where you see the face of the guy you're playing against. So far, in online games, you're playing against a name. To be able to see their faces and reactions, fear, anguish, that would be really nice. That requires a lot of bandwidth but I think when we have broadband in enough homes all around the world, developers will automatically make use of it and implement elements like this into traditional games. In an online racing game it would be nice too.

Gamers.com: Would it be possible technology-wise to go online with an EyeToy game? For example in order to dance against someone else with both persons hearing the same song?

JF: It depends on whether it's real-time or turn-based. For example it would be possible that you download a movie to see how I danced in the game so you can do better. Both dancing in real-time via split screen would require a lot of bandwidth so I doubt it's possible to do that right now. It will be the next step though.

Gamers.com: Thanks a lot for your time and we wish you all the best for the ambitious plans with EyeToy.



Hljómar vel, ya? hér er ein mynd úr Eyetoy leik;