Who's your daddy, PlayStation Eye? Dr. Richard Marks, a.k.a. Father of the EyeToy. He takes Newsweek's D-pad deadlocked dude N'gai Croal through the behind-the-scenes of the PlayStation Eye, which N'gai describes, and we paraphrase, as "Wiimote without the Wiimote" (called that one last year...).

Marks points out that the PS Eye bucks one trend in digital cameras these days: with the increasing sensitivity of sensors, manufacturers have gone towards cramming smaller pixels into the camera, but with little improvement per pixel sensor. Sony and partner OmniVision have gone in the other direction: instead of smaller pixels, they improved the sensitivity of each sensor instead.

It may explain the 640x480x60 resolution of the PS Eye, but it provides surprising benefits. Marks tells Croal, most webcams only do 30fps, so a 60fps 640x480 stream would actually be an improvement. Additionally, the 320x240x120fps mode of the camera is too fast for the TV - most TVs are maxed out at 60fps - but not for the PS3's processing capabilities, and 120fps improves motion tracking in the camera's field of view. We expect to see this mode primarily for gesture-control video games.

Finally, because of the improve-each-pixel approach, the camera's got some impressive low-light qualities. The light given by a flat-screen LCD monitor was enough, Marks notes, to light up his face for the PS Eye - and that was the prototype hardware! (A word of warning, thus: do behave under the cover of, well, dim light: certain videos ought not to be captured at 60fps...)

Integrated to the camera is the microphone array (not just microphone, microphone array) for audio chat and voice recognition in games. As Marks tells Croal, before, only headsets could get clean voice data into a gaming console. With the mic array on the PS Eye, there's no need for a mic boom an inch from your mouth. The array is good at removing ambient noise and focusing on the player's voice (so as long as you're in front of the mic array).

So who's your daddy, PlayStation Eye? Er... based on YouTube's existence and the proper software, everyone will. Lord have mercy on atrocious cosplaying and skin-melting singing...