If you were among the PlayStation 3 owners looking forward to a lazy holiday season spent playing with your fuzzy new EyePet friend, prepare to be terribly disappointed. GameStop and Amazon both shifted the listed release data for the EyePet from November 2009 to April 2010, and now Gamervision has received the official word from Sony.

"The North American territory has decided to take additional time to focus on the EyePet product and can confirm it will not be available this holiday. EyePet is an innovative and exciting new IP to the PS3 platform and SCEA marketing will spend additional time to continue educating consumers and retail channels, setting the table for a successful product launch. We will provide more details on an updated launch timeframe very soon"

As Gamervision points out, the delay comes at an odd time, as review copies of the game have already been handed out to major outlets, whose reviewers are even now, as we speak, experiencing the sort of fuzzy goodness that the rest of us will be left without during the cold winter months.

For now we can only hope that the April release date listed at GameStop is simply speculation, and that Sony won't keep the warm fuzzies from us for too long.

EyePet Delay Official [Gamervision]

Dr. Richard Marks, creator of the EyeToy, illustrated much of the same technology during the PlayStation 2 era, using a much more bulbous magic wand to showcase what the console's camera accessory was capable of. Hardly as impressive an implementation of what was on display during Sony's E3 showing, which teased first-person shooter and intricate drawing functions, but fascinating nonetheless.

I remember using similar tech when I first played Harmonix's EyeToy: AntiGrav at my first E3, when the game was intended to ship with bright green gloves, letting the camera track player movements. This looks familiar, but certainly not as refined as what appears to be possible with the PlayStation 3 iteration.

Thanks to Miguel for the heads up!

UK site DarkZero wrote up the first-person sword swinging adventure game's on-stage demo, which utilized the fluorescent-green foam toy sword to interpret a player's motions. That NERF-life sword comes packed in with the EyeToy Play sequel.

SCEE London sounded pretty proud of themselves for developing the tech, but we'd actually seen it in an EyeToy game before. An early version of Harmonix's EyeToy Antigrav, a futuristic hoverboard game, was initially going to ship with bright green gloves to achieve the same effect. Ultimately, it didn't, depriving us of fingerless glove ownership (again).

Sony to have 1:1 motion-tracking sword game by Xmas [Dark Zero]

The overall message seems to highlight the PS3's diversity as an entertainment device, with the aim of appealing to an all-ages audience.

Full release follows the jump:

06/05/2008 17:30
Get closer to friends and family with PlayStation

London, 6th May 2008- With PlayStation, games have never been more family-friendly. We've created up the genre of 'social gaming': games where players of all ages socialise through gaming. For the kids and the young-at-heart, there are EyeToy® games that burn physical as well as mental energy. We've got puzzle games that everyone will want to try- whether at home or in the car - and we're also allowing you to take TV on the move. You can even team up as a family to challenge your overseas relatives to a round of online quizzing over PLAYSTATION®Network (PSN) - and when it comes to keeping in touch further, we've just given PSP™ (PlayStation®Portable) video and voice chat capabilities.

PLAYSTATION®3 (PS3™): the next generation system that brings you High Definition gaming, Blu-ray movies, internet browsing, music, TV and entry into the online community of PLAYSTATION Network.

Buzz!™: Quiz TV (PS3)

Buzz!: Quiz TV for PS3™ is the next-gen game that takes the Buzz! experience into the future and across the world via the online PLAYSTATION Network. Arriving this June, it'll give you instant access to quizzes on almost any subject you can think of, and will be supported by vast downloadable and user-generated content. The game's Blu-ray disc comes with wireless buzzers and contains a whopping 5000 questions, divided into five selectable channels to suit every quiz fanatic - it's a quiz where you choose the content. Not enough questions on your subject of choice? Write your own. New online quiz community MyBuzz!™ links directly from the internet to the game and allows players to write and upload personalised quizzes plus download quizzes created by other online players which suit their questioning needs. The disc is also your gateway to online gaming and content, connecting you to Sofa vs Sofa mode, in which you can team up with everyone at home to challenge up to three other teams of gamers online, as well as to extra downloadable quiz packs and quizzes written by other Buzz! users.

echochrome (PSP and PS3)

In echochrome, it's not what you see, it's the way that you see it - and the more pairs of eyes involved, the better your chances of solving the dozens of fiendish puzzles ahead. The world of echochrome consists of a series of crazy mazes inhabited by the endlessly wandering Walker, and your goal is to help him get where he wants to go - despite being faced with seemingly insurmountable obstacles and hazards. The trick is to open your mind and let your imagination run riot: by rotating each maze and changing your perspective on the action, you might just be able to change reality... A brand new and brain-busting puzzle experience, echochrome will have you asking everyone you know: "Can you see the answer?"

PlayTV™ (PS3)

Television how, when and where you want it; Play TV lets you pause, rewind and record free-to-air digital television using your PS3 and, best of all - after a one-off payment for the peripheral, the service is completely free. End family squabbles as you watch one channel while recording another through a dual TV tuner, stream television anywhere using a wi-fi connected PSP or pause television should household events demand your attention - Play TV offers access to great TV without the pocket-punching bills this later this year.

Folding@home (PS3)

Developed by Stanford University, Folding@home uses the combined power of interlinked computers around the world to perform mathematical calculations that help with research into protein folding - research that could lead to breakthroughs in the fight against diseases such as Alzheimer's, CJD, Parkinson's and various forms of cancer. In 2006, it was realised that a network of interlinked PS3 processors could boost the project's output to unprecedented levels thanks to the power of the PS3's Cell processor. All you need to do to play a part in Folding@home is to select the project's icon in the Network column of the Cross-Media Bar (XMB), then leave your machine running.

PLAYSTATION®Network (PSN)

The online home of PS3, PLAYSTATION®Network is where you'll find some of PlayStation's most innovative and fun games for you to download at wallet-friendly prices. You'll also find downloadable extras, free online gaming, voice chat, video chat, web surfing and more.

Elefunk™ (PSN for PS3)

A herd of elephants needing safe guidance through a series of perilous levels requires a guide, so help steer the jungle giants to safety this May. Across 20 levels, create safe passage across ravines, rivers, fires, pits and swamps with the materials available to you. Plus, swap construction for Deconstruction in a specially designed multiplayer game where players must disassemble a structure as carefully as possible without letting the structure, or imperilled elephants, fall...

Buzz! Junior™ (PSN for PS3)

This summer, we're bringing the fun of the children's Buzz! Junior range to PSN with bundles of mini-games for PS3 owners to download at pocket money prices. Buzz! Junior titles offer all the fun, easy play of Buzz! controllers, but with wacky mini-games of skill and speed rather than trivia-based play - they're perfect for youngsters to play with friends and family. Buzz! Junior: Jungle Party will be the first to arrive on PSN in a download featuring five great mini-games from the original PS2 version - now in 720p High Definition; it'll be followed by similar downloads from Buzz! Junior: RoboJam and Buzz! Junior: Monster Rumble.

PixelJunk™ Eden (PSN for PS3)

After sowing seeds with its Racers and Monsters, PixelJunk puts down roots on PLAYSTATION®Network with PixelJunk Eden. Leap and swing between lush alien vegetation in a truly innovative platform game which constantly evolves over time as you move through the perfectly realised undergrowth, hunting treasures and smashing enemies from his path. Destroyed enemies scatter pollen across the landscape, which the player must collect and use to pollinate seed pods before using the new growth to progress further.

PlayStation®2 (PS2™): the world's best-selling entertainment system that offers you great gameplay and the biggest social gaming brands

EyeToy® Play: PomPom Party (PS2)

Limber-up for the first cheerleading game for PS2, which comes bundled with real pompoms to help every wannabe-cheerleader pull off some groovy moves. As you follow the directions on-screen and shake your pompoms to the music, the EyeToy Camera will detect your movements and score your routines. So keep that rhythm going, and soon the whole block will be bouncing to your cheers in EyeToy Play: PomPom Party - it's arriving in time for Christmas in late 2008.

EyeToy® Play: Hero (PS2)

The ultimate quest for all budding adventurers - embark on a fantastic journey through a colourful, exciting fantasy world. EyeToy Play: Hero includes its own toy sword for you to wield; the EyeToy Camera will detect your sword's movements as you perform feats of bravery throughout the land. Watch your adventure unfold on-screen, hone your swordplay, and maybe one day you'll be considered a true hero of the kingdom! It's arriving in time for Christmas in late 2008.

PSP™ (PlayStation®Portable): the handheld entertainment system that offers games, music, film, TV, communications, GPS mapping and more

Buzz!™: Master Quiz (PSP)

Turning PSP into the ultimate social gaming experience, Buzz! makes his handheld debut in Buzz!: Master Quiz. Keep friends and family amused and entertained on the move, on holiday or on the bus as Buzz! hits the road, free from its front-room beginnings. Play solo or get involved with new multiplayer rounds such as Pass Around (which enables six players to play Buzz! with just one PSP!). The ultimate PlayStation quiz experience has hit the road - are you along for the ride this July?

Go!Messenger™ (PSP)

Keep in touch using your PSP with a revolutionary new addition, which turns your handheld system into a wireless communication tool featuring video chat, voice chat and instant messaging. It allows PSP owners to instant message each other- then, just add a headset and voice messaging and voice calls become possible. Add Go!Cam, the USB camera for PSP, and video calls and video messaging become a possibility. Go!Messenger is out now - it's another reason why PSP is becoming a travel essential.

SKYPE™ (PSP)

Skype, the online communication software that allows Internet users to call each other free of charge*, has now arrived on the new Slim and Light PSP. Talk to any one of the hundred million Skype users worldwide with free voice calls, managing your contacts list and checking which of your friends are online via your PSP. You can opt into the SkypeOut and SkypeIn features, which connect Skype callers with landline and mobile users - and you can do all of this from any wireless hotspot - anywhere in the world.

As long as you position the various elements of the tank in proper relative positions (tank body middle, treads off to the side and a turret up top), the software smoothly integrates the design to a badass killing machine.

After shooting the video, I drew a tank of my own and was incredibly impressed by the easily digitized product. Because while we've seen this tank game before on plenty of platforms, playing with your own customizable character on screen is unbelievably fulfilling. Sure, the first thing many of us think is perverted drawings cropping up in multiplayer matches, but watch the vid and you'll realize that the unforeseen potential in the technology could bring interesting gameplay possibilities—even in a small tech demo like this one.

The Wall Street Journal has an interesting, though sort dated, article on their site today about the increasing popularity of unusual, and simplistic controller for gaming.

The short article gives a nod to the Wii, the Power Glove, Guitar Hero, Rock Band and even brain-sensing helmets, but it doesn't really get interesting until it starts talking about what Richard Marks, one of Sony's games division researchers and father of the EyeToy, is up to.

There's a lot of pie-in-the-sky talk from Marks, but the one thing he mentions that sounds both conceivable and quite fun is the idea of using a camera, likely the HD EyeToy, to let you take a picture of a drawing you made with a pen on a piece of paper, and then turning that picture into an animated character for the game you're playing.

We've already seen something like this in Drawn to Life, and while that game uses the concept to great effect, it's sort of hard for someone like me to draw a decent picture with a stylus on a touch screen.

Videogames Expand A Popular New Phase Of Full-Body Playing [WSJ]

Oh sure, she points to games that require physical interaction, say Dance Dance Revolution and Nicktoons Movin' Jellyfish Jam, as being heavy calorie burners, but I suspect ulterior motives. My guess is that she spent two hours in line to play Manhunt 2 as it was intended.

Moving Beyond Joysticks, and Off the Couch [New York Times]

The official PlayStation Blog provides a quick technical rundown of the microphone-equipped Eye, promising "upcoming games that integrate the Eye in really innovative ways." I'm hoping that developers take advantage of that 4-microphone array and explore new PlayStation Eye gameplay concepts that go beyond what the EyeToy offered.

PlayStation Eye, A Little More Info... [PlayStation.blog]

The Eye of Judgment set up over in the Sony booth is pretty big, there are six tables set up, two of which are set up for playing head-to-head online and the rest are designed to be played side-by-side on a single machine. At one end of the area was a large glass display case with a selection of some of the retails card packs and boxes. I hate to say this, because of all of the required equipment and space, but I'm really looking forward to this game.

The camera controlled game that owes at least part of its existence to Atari's Marble Madness puts your image on a series of panels, each broken up into 16 by 16 (and later 32 by 32) grids. Moving your arms about will cause the tiles in these grids to move upward, creating a wave that affects the motion and position of the ball. You'll push the ball off of a square section, moving it either into another grid, down a ramp or tube, and ultimately into the goal.

It's not easy to control the ball at first, and given that the Games Convention floor featured nothing short of optimal lighting for a PlayStation Eye game, it might make it even more difficult to manipulate in a home environment.

But guiding the ball is only part of the equation. You'll need to focus on precision and near-expert timing; say, for instances where the ball needs to avoid one of the dangerous Red Devils blocking its path or you need to deposit it in a launcher. I found the game oddly addictive, promising myself after each of the levels that I'd move onto something else on the show floor.

While Trials of Topoq may not ultimately result in a fully featured experience, most EyeToy game players probably don't expect epic, motion controlled games anyway. It's conceptually and graphically simple, but still kind of fun. Later levels require great patience and can lead to frustration.

Regardless, it's yet another interesting proof of concept title for the USB camera and should at least be given a fair shake by anyone looking for something a little bit different.

He reveals one interesting tidbit about his new PlayStation Network title, Calling All Cars. In response to a question about whether Wacky Races, the 60s-era Hanna-Barbera cartoon, was an influence on the game, Jaffe says:

No. R Crumb was an influence - the cartoon artist who did a lot of comics back in the 60s and 70s. Originally, it was not going to be so much of a G-rated family game - it was going to be more of an X-rated, kind of cartoony Ralph [Bakshi, director of the animated Fritz the Cat] kind of thing, and for a number of reasons we ended up moving away from that. One was a gameplay reason, one was an issue with guys on the team, where guys didn't know whether we wanted to take it that far. Wacky Races is more benign than where this actually started out, which was much more X-rated.

X-rated, eh? David, I'm sure there are plenty of Japanese developers looking for their next Hentai game hit who would love to chat with you. Michael McWhertor

ThreeSpeech Interviews David Jaffe [Three Speech]

ThreeSpeech, Sony's quasi mouthpiece, has posted a short-ish Q&A about the recently announced Eye for the PlayStation 3.

In a nutshell, the Eye is way cooler than the EyeToy, though you can use the PS2 camera on the PS3. Specifically, the Eye is "superior to EyeToy in nearly every way: four times the resolution, two times the frame-rate, two times the sensitivity and no compression artefacts. It has two fundamental new features: a two-setting optical zoom lens, and a built-in microphone array."

That microphone has the ability to separate human voice from other noise like the sound of fans, vacuums or wild hyenas.

Hit the site for all of the nitty-gritty. Brian Crecente

Playstation Eye Q&A [Three Speech]

Little in the way of details were revealed for Uncharted since May of last year, but we know it features a baseball-jersey clad protagonist who looks more "I'm a Mac" than "I'm a PC" running through the jungle, one rich with foliage and bloom lighting. The trailer for the game promises great animation, awesome platforming, and a dash of stealth. The newly revealed name hints at a quest to reclaim Sir Francis Drake's lost silver fortune from a Caribbean island.

Other fun trademarks uncovered by user gofreak were the EyeToy for PLAYSTATION 3 (aka "EYE3") logo and a mysterious registration and logo for "beats." which looks to be an SCEE submission for distributing music and videos over a network. Michael McWhertor

Sony trademark snooping (ND's game..?) [NeoGAF]

I thought I had wasted time taking Sony's most recent Playstation 3 survey. It seemed mostly about trying to see what PS3 owners thought of the console. They asked about the gaming experience, online experience, yada, yada, yada. But then, on the last page, they asked which peripheral I was most excited about. Among the list of things I was totally disinterested in was the Eye Toy (Digital HD Camera). A high-def Eye Toy? Hmm, I think that would be way overkill for typical video chatting, but it could introduce a whole new level of detail to camera-enhanced play. I'm intrigued. Brian Crecente

You will be happy to hear that both the Playstation 2 keyboard by Logitech and the PS2's EyeToy work on the Playstation 3.

The keyboard, and I believe this is true of all USB keyboard, allows you to enter text in any text field and requires no set-up. You can go into the accessory settings on the console to tweak the settings if you'd like to, but you don't need to.

With the EyeToy, I plugged it into a USB port and went to Accessories and then Test Camera on the console's menu. In Test Camera it first said no device found, but a few seconds later a live image from the camera popped up with the words USB Camera next to it. This makes me think that any USB camera might work and that it's not the EyeToy specifically being detected.

I tried using the Xbox 360's Vision Camera and while it detected that a USB device was plugged in, it didn't work. Too bad, that would have been hilarious.

While the EyeToy sends live video to the PS3, I couldn't find anything to do with this ability, so I suppose we'll have to wait and see how they make use of it down the line. According to the online user manual for the PS3, once the network launches we will be able to both voice and video chat, so I suspect the EyeToy or any USB camera will work with that.

It's kinda cool that Sony left it open for gamers to use any USB device for things like the keyboard, camera and headset. I also love that you can use any Bluetooth headset with the console. Very neat. Brian Crecente

Gamasutra reports that the Xbox 360 Camera will be shipping with a free gesture-based game. OK Sony, now you can claim Microsoft is copying you.

TotemBall uses a players arm movements to control a wheeled totem pole around the levels as they try to collect items and reach the exit in a time limit.

Msoft says that TotemBall is just the first of what will likely be a slew of gesture-based games. Might I suggest a few? How about a couple of mini-game collections, one where you snowboard and maybe an exercise game. They all sound cool.

Is it just me, or does the guy in the picture look like he's doing the robot? Because that would be a freakin' cool game: A Robot Dance Instructor. Brian Crecente

Xbox 360 Camera to Ship with Free Game [Gamasutra]

A next generation PlayStation deserves one thing: a next-gen Eye Toy. Sony Computer Entertainment submitted patent number 2006-178948, which is believed to be the new Eye Toy. This could counter the lackluster response to Sony's motion sensor controller. The patents says, in a nutshell, that a camera will recognize the movements and positioning of objects and then translate this in-game. The new technology enables a single 2D camera to analyze objects in full 3D by using a patented mapping technique. Previously, two cameras were needed to map objects into full 3D. Say what you want about Sony's brain farts of late, the company still has some effing great engineers. So bring on the goofy boxing and fighting games, but in full HD! Brian Ashcraft

More Here [Next-Gen]

There's this "new trend afoot" where video games are getting active. Fortunately, cutting-edge tech and gaming mag Parenting is all over it. In their latest issue the glossy for the pregnant set looks at four games that get your kids off their ass on on their feet to (gasp) play games.

The article takes a quick look at Dance Dance Revolution, the Eye Toy, Donkey Konga and Nintendogs. Apparently, Parenting magazine is exactly one year behind the times. Expect the mag's next video game expose to hit next year when it looks at something called "high-definition gaming." Brian Crecente

Video Games Come Alive [Parenting, thanks Dirk]

GestureTek is not a stranger to console camera peripherals. The company previously worked on Sony's EyeToy and showcased their latest creation at E3: a head lock on program for the Xbox 360's camera. The company implied that the in-game camera would turn when players turn their heads. Fab game site Siliconera filmed this early E3 demo.

More Here [Siliconera]