2005 · SCE London Studio · Board game

EyeToy: Chat

PlayStation exclusive

You've probably experienced it before: you come to a party and you wear exactly the same clothes as a friend. Another thing: your relatives are busy on the phone, just like you urgently need to call your buddy. Or you want to chat and play a game of chess, but you can't find anyone to play with. These (and many more) annoying situations are now a thing of the past. Thanks to EyeToy: Chat, a videophone application for the PS2 that lets you talk to friends and other EyeToy: Chat owners while looking them in the eye.

Released: 11 February 2005
Platforms: PlayStation 2
Genres: Board game
Developers: SCE London Studio
Publishers: Sony Computer Entertainment
Themes: Business
Age ratings: USK 0

About

The EyeToy is a color webcam for use with the PlayStation 2. Supported games use computer vision and gesture recognition to process images taken by the EyeToy. This allows players to interact with the games using motion, color detection, and also sound, through its built-in microphone. It was released in 2003 and in total, it has 10.5 million sales.

The camera was manufactured by Logitech, although most newer EyeToys were manufactured by Namtai. The model "SCEH-0004" was manufactured either by Namtai or Chicony. The camera is mainly used for playing EyeToy games developed by Sony and other companies. It is not intended for use as a normal PC camera, although some programmers have written unofficial drivers for it.

Keywords

eyetoy support
voice chat
played without touching a controller
chat interaction

Media

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

Development

The EyeToy was conceived by Richard Marks in 1999, after witnessing a demonstration of the PlayStation 2 at the 1999 Game Developers Conference in San Jose, California. Marks' idea was to enable natural user interface and mixed reality video game applications using an inexpensive webcam, using the computational power of the PlayStation 2 to implement computer vision and gesture recognition technologies. He joined Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) that year, and worked on the technology as Special Projects Manager for Research and Development.

Marks' work drew the attention of Phil Harrison, then Vice President of Third Party Relations and Research and Development at SCEA. Soon after being promoted to Senior Vice President of Product Development at Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (SCEE) in 2000, Harrison brought Marks to the division's headquarters in London to demonstrate the technology to a number of developers. At the demonstration, Marks was joined with Ron Festejo of Psygnosis (which would later merge to become London Studio) to begin developing a software title using the technology, which would later become EyeToy: Play. Originally called the iToy (short for "interactive toy") by the London branch, the webcam was later renamed to the EyeToy by Harrison. It was first demonstrated to the public at the PlayStation Experience event in August 2002 with four minigames.