The PlayStation Eye camera will be released this summer in Europe. Sony has also given a Japanese release date for Eye of Judgement, the trading card game that has been used to show the camera off.

The camera, a logical extension of the successful eyeToy, which works in a way similar to the Xbox Live Vision Camera, will coincide nicely with the release of SingStar for the PS3, which promises to make use of the camera.

As well as taking pictures and footage the PSEye will also come equipped with “A sophisticated microphone with the ability to reduce background noise and focus on the spoken word for smoother, more accurate speech recognition and transfer.”

Sony Computer Entertainment Europe's President, David Reeves, seemed pretty pleased with it, saying,



Meanwhile, Japanese gaming bible Famitsu (we have got to come up with another prefix for that mag - suggestions in the Forum below please) reports that Eye of Judgement will be released this Autumn over in Japan. When SPOnG spoke to Sony earlier, however, no date was available for Europe.

If you're not familiar with Eye of Judgement, it's your basic trading card game with a nifty twist. The addition of the PSEye to the game allows your PS3 to show the relevant in-game monsters interacting with you in the real world. Take a look at the image above to see for yourself.

As well as SingStar and Eye of Judgement, Sony told SPOnG that the camera will work with “a few things on the network,” although no further details are available yet.

While Eye of Judgement looks interesting enough to get us playing a trading card game (no mean feat, we assure you), it seems to SPOnG that it's about time that Sony did something that's actually new with its technology.