Playstation 3 Gets Facial Recognition Capabilities [Courtesy of Playstation Eye Camera]

Sony is taking cues from Microsoft’s recently introduced Project Natal that allows for a “controller-free gaming and entertainment experience” when playing on an Xbox, and have announced that courtesy of the existing PlayStation Eye camera, the PlayStation3 is going to be able to face detect and track your skeletal movement (an industry first), soon.

Sony Europe’s head of developer services, Kish Hirani, said that the functionality will be added soon and that the new PS3 will soon “detect gender and even the age of the face, separate facial features such as the nose, eyes and ears, and even detect whether you’re smiling or not”. Although face recognition seems like a really neat thing to get with your favorite upcoming game, it’s up to the developers to feature it.

I honestly thought that the Playstation Eye camera was pretty useless or an under-used technology in nicer words, but it looks like the company has finally got the idea of putting it at work. Am I the only one who thinks the PS3 just went ahead of Xbox … ?