EyePet

"The cool thing about this is we tested it with families, and mums told us they love playing this with their kids before they go to sleep," says the Sony man. "It's so relaxing, unlike many other games which get them excited. While they had the game at home it replaced the bedtime story before the kids went to sleep."

It's just as important to care for your pet as it is to play with him. Pets get dirty so you need to shampoo and wash them as in Nintendogs. There are neat touches to the process such as the condensation that collects on the screen while you're using the shower, and which you can wipe off with your hand. It's also fun to give your pet a blowdry and watch his fur wave around in the hot air.

You can create a garden, plant flowers and trees and collect food for your pet. For our demo Nick produces some food he made earlier - biscuits in the shape of the PlayStation symbols - in a virtual Tupperware container. Flicking the container sends biscuits flying and the pet jumps up to grab them. When he's full, he lets you know by chucking any food you dispense back up into the air. "We didn't want it to be about menu selections and statistics. It's a mini-game, something fun," apparently.

That's also the thinking behind the feature used to analyse the status of your pet. Instead of looking at graphs and symbols you use the magic card to give him an x-ray, bringing up an image of his brain, bones and organs. If he's happy, for example, his heart will appear bright red and will pump away at a jolly pace.

You can then send the x-ray to a fictional institute known as the Pet Centre, and they'll respond with a report the following day. The report will consist of a video of live actors telling you how well you did. The Pet Centre will even award prizes for effective care. "It's all part of this believable experience - the pet is believable in your living room, and so is the institute behind the game," says Mr Sony.

For EyePet's next trick, we're shown how you can teach your pet to draw. The demo man takes a piece of paper and a marker pen and separately sketches the component parts of a simple aeroplane - the wings, the body and the propeller. He writes "ELLIE" on the body. He then uses the magic card to select a material to make the plane out of. There are obvious options like wood, plastic, cardboard, newspaper and plastic, but you can also choose from fantasy materials like fruit.

He holds the paper up to the camera and three exclamation marks appear on-screen to signify the pet recognises the drawing. The pet produces his own sketchbook, sticks a pen in his mouth and starts drawing - specifically, replicating the shapes on the real-life piece of paper. The virtual shapes float upwards, turn 3D and come together to create the plane. It's not quite perfect - the propeller is a little off and "ELLIE" looks more like "FI IF" - but it's instantly recognisable as the plane our human friend just drew. The pet jumps in the cockpit and starts zooming around, controlled by the DualShock. The background changes to blue skies and fluffy clouds appear along with brightly coloured balloons, which the pet starts popping.

You can't just draw anything you like and expect your pet to copy you - he can only draw certain things such as planes, cars, robots, puppets and balloons, and you need to know the component parts required for each design. However, "The designs themselves are completely open," says the Sony chap. "As long as I draw the body, the wings and the propeller... I could have drawn bigger wings, or omitted parts if I'd wanted. I could have just drawn the wings, and the pet would have sat on the wings."

The balloon template offers even more scope for creativity. "The good thing about balloons is that any shape will do. You can draw a heart and that heart will become a balloon, floating round in the air." Time for my signature question: but can you draw a penis? "If you like. The point is, yes, there are preset, loose templates and within those it's really up to players to come up with a design." To illustrate this we're shown a pile of previous demo drawings and shown how the chaps from Wired subverted the car template, turning it into a shopping trolley. Bizarrely, not one person has drawn a nob.

Which means it is the end of days, surely. And soon we will all be snacking on pup scratchings washed down with cat milk as we play with our virtual pets. Or watching our children do so, anyway - EyePet's too cute and kiddy for the kind of gamer who thinks it's not worth playing a shooter unless you get to see what the inside of your enemy's face looks like. There's not a great deal of depth here and there's no challenge; EyePet isn't a game in the traditional sense, more of a 21st century Tamagotchi. But just as kids went mad for those toys back in the day, they're likely to go gaga over this one by the time we're all eating pastry-encased dachshunds instead of sausage rolls.