Sony America’s Dr Richard Marks has revealed that the platform holder rejected 3D camera technology similar to that utilized in Microsoft’s Project Natal as it proved too expensive and featured similar applications to those already achievable with PlayStation Eye.
While a fan of the technology, Marks revealed in an appearance on the Engadget Show that Sony ultimately felt it didn’t provide enough "new experiences" to justify forking out for the extra cost over the Eye.
"We tried a lot of different 3D cameras. I love the 3D camera technology; personally, I like the technology part of it,” said Marks.
"We worked closely with our game teams at what it would enable, and it enabled making the things we already did with EyeToy more robust, but it didn’t really enable as many new experiences as what we were hoping it would enable, so it made the things we were already able to do a little bit more robust – which is good – but it adds a lot of cost and it didn’t enable some of the other experiences we wanted to achieve."
Elsewhere, he also added that PlayStation Move proved more reliable in low-lit conditions:
"Sometimes a tech demo doesn’t translate into a product very well… the lighting in the room has to be good enough for the camera to see the colour reliably and that makes for a difficult product when you don’t have a control over those variables," he explained.
"And with the 3D camera, it’s a little bit similar in that we found that there were some things we wanted to be able to do, and sometimes it wouldn’t work reliably for what we wanted to do."
PlayStation Move is due out later this year.