Remember that PlayStation Eye you purchased way back when? You know, that PS peripheral you used for all of 12 minutes before shelving indefinitely? It's time to break that bad boy back out, as a detailed hack from the NUI Group shows how to convert it into a working webcam within Windows. Make no mistake, this isn't the simplest hack in the whole wide world, but the long-winded instructions ought to guide you right through. What are you waiting for? Head on down and get to work!

[Via PS3 Fanboy]

Toshiba is pulling an EyeToy, minus a diabolical plan to actually sell the thing and make a killing off of collectable elemental decks. The company's Cambridge-based Research Lab has some new video camera-based feature they're prototyping for possible eventual TV implementation. The real highlight is a fist-based cursor control -- just stick out your hand, make a fist, and control a cursor on-screen for navigating the TV's functions. You can also put up your palm to stop the madness, and even rotate 3D images on-screen, but it's all a little shaky for now. Another thing we saw was picture recognition: hold up a cue card to the TV with an image on it and the TV recognizes it and performs a pre-assigned function. Tosh is also working on speech recognition and some other things; not really changing the world, but some fun stuff all the same.

This makes sense on very many levels, but at the same time we've gotta think those long-suffering PS3 owners will be a bit "hacked off" by Sony's announcement of a motion-tracking sword game headed for... the PS2. The PS2's market saturation (every man, woman and child on earth has at least two), and the EyeToy's general success (10.5 million units sold) make the combo the perfect trojan horse for fighting the good fight against Wii world domination. Sony's using new (sort of) color tracking technology to beef up the EyeToy's motion tracking that will let it detect and track brightly colored objects, instead of just motion, for two new EyeToy: Play games due for the holidays this year. The one we've really got our eye on is the kiddie-oriented Hero which is a first person perspective sword fighting game that comes complete with a fluorescent toy sword for battling kinda-almost-evil antagonists. Of course, none of this would be disappointing in the slightest if Sony would just work PS2 backwards compatibility into its fully capable PS3, and hey, maybe they'll surprise us. Nudge, comma, nudge. Wink. Wink.

[Thanks, Seth B]

Hey, we've seen quite a few gimmicky game control schemes in our day. We thought we were jaded, believed that we could no longer be moved emotionally by a few dorks in a lab, promising to revolutionize video games with their insanity. Until we saw Cam-Trax. You'll get it in a moment by peeping the video after the break, but the basic gist is this: Cam-Trax offers highly accurate and responsive tracking of random colorful objects you hold in front of your webcam and tell it to track. Gameplay can be EyeToy-esque, but it can also be so much more, since the unit can track many objects in a full three dimensions. The video shows everything from a glorified game of pong to a FPS, and promises to control "any game" with "any webcam." Show us more, Cam-Trax.

[Thanks, Chen D.]

Well it may not be the high-definition EyeToy HD IP webcam that gamers had been hoping for, but Sony has finally announced the (first?) official EyeToy for PS3, called simply the PlayStation Eye. With an array of four microphones, two zoom levels, and capture rate as high as 120fps, the Eye promises to deliver unprecedented cam-enhanced gameplay, although the VGA video resolution (and that's at 'only' 60fps) will probably nonetheless be a disappointment to some. Bundled in with the not-yet-priced package will be EyeCreate editing software, which allows users to add different effects to their content as well as record footage using time-lapse and slow-mo settings, among others. No word yet on other specs (still shot res?) or compatible games, either, but we imagine that a lot more info will trickle out as the Eye's planned summer release date grows nearer.

Update: Well what do you know, Sony and Hasbro also announced Eye of Judgment, the visual, interactive-card driven game they demoed at E3 last year. Good luck keeping people from printing out their own cards from the internet, guys. Should be out in Europe this summer, and the rest of the world this fall.