EyeToy and Digimask bring heads together
Where's your he-- no, I'm sorry, I can't bring myself to do it.
EyeToy owners could soon see their heads cut off, blown up or furrowed in concentration thanks to a deal announced today between Sony and Digimask. Starting very soon, gamers will be able to take a couple of snaps of their own head with EyeToy and have them magically remodelled into a fully animatable 3D head for use in compatible videogames.
The Digimask technique has been around for a while, but this is the first time it's been put to use on such a grand scale, and it could help push EyeToy even further into the sales stratosphere - it's already notched up more than 2.4 million units worldwide. With gamers able to save their 3D heads to a memory card, it won't be long, Sony says, before developers start supporting custom noggins - just imagine trotting out for your favourite team or actually shooting your mate in the face during a game of SOCOM.
Although the technology is obviously not backwards compatible, Sony claims to have several titles in development that will take advantage of it, the first of which could be launched in July. We just worry that, when the time comes, mischievous gamers will take pictures of, well, other body parts, giving the "Personal Head Creation" technology a bad name. It could certainly throw up some interesting court cases...