I don't know why we need facial recognition technology for the PlayStation Eye, but it works, and Sony recently showed it off in Japan at the CESA Developers Conference.
Boiling down the tech term-heavy report on Gamasutra, it seems that the PlayStation Eye's recongnition powers can match and compare photos, and then do the same things for faces. For facial recognition, the PS Eye would be able to detect things like age and nationality, but even the direction and orientation of a face in the frame.
How will they use this tech? Avatar-linked facial recognition was shown off at the conference. According to the report, faces are tracked in a way that if the user smiles, the avatar would change to reflect that, smiling back. Also, a mini-game called Smile Competition was shown. It would score players on their smiles -- best smile wins.
Interesting, Sony. But you're going to have to pull out something cooler than a smile competition game when you show this off to the gaming world.
Dale North is Destructoid's Editor-In-Chief, a founding editor, and specialist in Japanese gaming. An accomplished musician, Dale was reporting from Japan during the earthquakes of 2011. Luckily, he got the fuck out alive and is home in America now with his wife and beloved corgi, Einstein. Dale is also a co-founder of Destructoid's sister anime site
Japanator. Likes Corgis, Sega Saturn, PSP, iPhone, Photographic tools.
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Contest:
5:20 PM on 09.02.2009 | 
The eyetoy was around in the PS2 era. Aside from games like Play and Groove (which were early versions of the current "active games" fad) Sony doesn't seem to know what to do with this tech or how to use it in games. I suspect that the same will hold true for NATAL and Microsoft. The stuff is cool and all, and it's neat to scan textures in for Little Big Planet level design - but overall, no one as yet has been able to create a "killer app" for the tech.
http://createdigitalmotion.com/2009/08/06/trick-out-your-ps3-eye-webcam-best-cam-for-vision-augmented-reality/
how would the eye be able to id nationality?
that could get ugly
Also more games need to use the camera to use as a custom face on your characters. Rainbow Six is the only game I know that does it. Bring it to Home at least.
as for this whole photo recog. stuff, at least the tech is growing. sony can't force people to use nor can they magically make a use for every single tech breakthrough.
but seriously, I don't see this, natal, or anything similiar having any great impact on gamers who only play quality hardcore games. this kinda crap has never done well, since the powerglove to the guncon which actually has a legit use. even the instrument ones can only be used with a couple games, so their sales/use have to be a fraction of what the actual games sold.
@pedro I find it hilarious that Natal is essentially a psEye