PlayStation Eye Chat: Shatter for PSN

217 0

Man, somehow we missed the incredibly cool upcoming PSN game, Shatter, at E3. Thankfully, the kind folks at developer Sidhe agreed to participate in the PSB’s first-ever video interview using the PlayStation Eye. And considering the company resides down in New Zealand (insert generic Flight of the Conchords quip here), it’s just about the only way to get them talking in-person.

Shatter is like Arkanoid on steroids…and we mean that in the most positive way. Here, Managing Director Mario Wynands talks about the game’s slick graphics, power-ups and unique push/pull gameplay that makes this PSN game the real deal.

And what do you think of the PS3 Video Chat format via the Eye? Drop a comment and let us know…it could be a great way to conduct interviews with folks from across the globe.

Comments are closed.

217 Comments

  • Awesome Idea Loved It
    Faster Way of Getting those Interview lol
    *Cough*Bioshock 2 Interview*Cough*

    ;]

    Looking Forward to This Game
    -EddyxMob-

  • This is brilliant guys. I would imagine that this is far easier to do than actually going to different studios and make a video essentially doing the same exact thing. I mean, why do that all the time when you can conveniently do it from the PS3?

    Not only that though, I would imagine that its far easier for you guys to just relax instead of holding your arm out the whole time when people speak. I would start getting shaky and tired.

  • This game looks great and I’m not usually stoked for downloadable games. :)

    Will there be custom soundtracks?

    I liked the video chat, it would be great to do it more often.
    I am actually very surprised at the quality of the mic. I think I need to get me one of those official PS3 mics. :D Maybe a PS eye too… I need that platinum in Burnout. :P

    • We gave Mario a login to answer questions. Now he\’s in New Zealand, where – by my calculations – it\’s next Tuesday. Hopefully he\’ll be able to jump in soon.

    • Custom soundtracks are not currently supported, but as we are publishing the game ourselves we can keep an eye on requests and consider adding stuff if enough people want it.

  • Yay! I got completely addicted to this game at E3. I can’t WAIT for it to be released!!!!

    • Glad you got a chance to play it. We were a bit out of the way, but did end up managing to get quite a few people to the \”booth\”.

  • wow the quality of the vid is pretty good you guys should do this more often

  • AND ALSO JAFF OR(Chris)can you kindly check

    and see whets wrong white the blog the

    comments takes more time then before to get

    submitted.

  • Ok Jeff and Chris, we need more of this. If you can go the the developer, just set up a chat room and make sure the have a Playstation Eye and there you go. Best idea ever on the blog right there people. massive thumbs up for Chris. Jeff you need to one up Chris now.

  • EXCELLENT CHAT INTERVIEW!

  • So when do we get Oovoo or Skype connectivity with the PS3 Eye? That would be sweetness! I don’t care about in-game chat.

  • Can’t wait for this game. It looks great! I’ve always loved Break Out style games so I’ll be sure to pick this one up.

  • This would seem a lot more convenient for you guys, than interviews in person, I like it. Can’t wait for Shatter!

  • looks like fun i will get it… but one question… are there any hidden sheep in this game?

  • excellent use of PSeye guys!

    if possible, is there anyway we could do this more often and maybe even a Q&A session with devs + PSBlog staff and maybe 4 lucky PSblog readers? i’d love to make use of this thing outside of Burnout and a few other games lol.

  • After E3, and seeing the motion controller demo I had to run out and get a playstationeye. it’s awesome to see you conducting an interview with the device. great interview, fun lookin game, anymore playstationEye games coming out soon?

  • How did you record it? Does the PS3 have the ability to record voice chat and export it or did you guys just put a camcorder in front of the TV?

  • I don’t think this should replace the regular interviews, but I think this is something good to be done when you can’t go all the way over to interview the people. Maybe like a desperate measure? I like regular ones more, and this is decent, but shouldn’t be used too often. I don’t mind it being used a few times, though. This message is overall positive about it, anyway.

  • Wow this is one of those “doh! how friggin obvious!” Heck, put these on the PSN for download! More integration between this website and the PS3 please!!!

  • This interview with the PS Eye was a lot better than I expected it to be. I still slightly prefer in-person interviews (they have a bit more audio/visual quality), but overall, not bad. Keep up the good work.

  • This is one of those “doh, why didnt we do this earlier?” bits. Using Playstation tech on the PS blog. Heck, I’d like to see these interviews on the PSN for download, or streaming. More PSBLOG and Playstation integration please! *pssst! I might be able to help with that ;)*

  • Great idea for vid chat Chris.

    I know the poker game for the PS3 also has it while you play and I’ve been on some poker games where we have 8 mini windows open with people.

  • Great idea! Both a great, convenient way to interview and a great way to highlight an oft-overlooked feature of the PS3.

    I think the #1 post was confused, thinking that this was an announcement of in-game PS Eye video chat… which would also be cool! Who needs 20th century voice chat when you can have 21st century video chat?

  • Well done guys. Don’t forget PS3 video chat supports up to 6 participants! What about a roundtable with devs and what not from around the globe? Like a video podcast or something.

  • This is an awesome idea. You could also get the fans ideas and feedback from games. Or maybe something like a featured member of the week or so. But cool game and awesome interview.

  • This looks like a great cross between Magic Ball and Astro Tripper. My husband and I love playing Magic Ball in local co-op, so I hope this has local co-op also (or is later available as a low-cost/free update). The top-down approach to this game lends itself to some more innovative local co-op scenarios than Magic Ball, I’m excited to see what can be done.

    One thing I missed in Astro Tripper was satifyingly deep bass and spatial presence in explosions, which Blast Factor did well. I hope this game has 24-bit/48khz lossless sound that can be output unfettered via LPCM (or lossy via 1.5mb/sec DTS).

    I really like these twists on classic gameplay tropes (Pixeljunk Eden, Blast Factor, Magic Ball, Super Stardust HD, Astro Tripper, 1942, etc) with high quality sound and/or budget prices. Keep it up!

    • We spent a lot of time on the sound and music. About 90% of the download footprint is actually sound files, not graphics files. Over 90 minutes of original soundtrack is included.

      This should definitely be a title you can turn way up.

  • hay Jeff and Chris
    There is a bug in the blog posts section. I was give option under everyone post to either edit them, or respond to them. However, when I click on respond, I got a 404 error. You guys might want to look into that. Or is there a feature coming in which we can respond to others and edit your posts?

  • Also, if there is local co-op, make sure all the trophies can be gotten in the co-op mode. Magic Ball was really irritating in that one of the trophies (200 bonus points) couldn’t be gotten in co-op mode.

    Starting from where you left off, like in Magic Ball and Astro Tripper, would also be nice. Always starting over again in Blast Factor is why I never got more trophies, and I couldn’t justify wasting electricity by leaving my PS3 on with the game paused.

    I hope this feedback helps!

  • Man thats a cool interview..now if I could read there playstation ID names, hummm

  • I like this new feature! You guys have definitely revived the PS Eye @ E3.

    Shatter is definitely a Day 1 buy. I Love the genre, and I gotta support the GripShift guys!

  • Why wasn’t the microphone array of the PSEye not used? If you have to have the PSEye and a Bluetooth Headset, I’m not sure anymore if I want to get a PSEye.

  • Good job of integrating good resources. And Shatter looks fun, can’t wait!

  • Dear Mr. Rubenstein,
    How do you get that kind of resolution? Is it Lighting? when I use my camera, I always have a fog feeling, looks like those first webcameras for PC.

    Do you have any Idea when PSN for Brazil will be lauched? and if it will use are 1 DLC?

    Best regards

  • Clever idea with the video chat interview. Do it more often.

  • Looks like a fun game. The video chat through eye chat is great. More interviews from the globe are better for sure.

    Little bit of stiffness on people due to no physical contact I guess, but great. Keep them coming.

  • Thanks for the interview update. Looks like a cool concept for the game. As for the Eye chat: It’s great to be using the PS Eye for this fuctionality. It makes sense to have the interview this way on the PS Blog : ) I’d love to see some more things out there for the Eye in addition to the Eye Pet and the motion controller coming out. Any other Eye concepts/software in the works?
    Thanks!

  • very nice idea, you guys should do interviews on PS Home that would be pretty cool to see

  • I like the idea of the PSEye video chat. That should allow you to have video interviews with developers a lot more often. I also thought the quality was good as well.

    Keep it up.

    The game looks great too. Hope the price is commensurate.

  • their logo has a wang above it, LOL

  • I would definitely be interested in watching this type of interview once a week.

    I would assume it takes a lot of problems with doing an interview out of the picture, and It also adds that “Only on Playstation” feel to it.

  • Hard to believe that interview was over the PSN using the PSeye because 9/10 times the quality is no where near as good as that. And no it’s not my internet I have 6Mbps down and 2Mbps upload. And this guy is on the otherside of the world? I call B.S.

    Skype is the only thing I’ve used that has really good video quality but you can only do video chat 1 on 1.

    • I can confirm it was definitely done over PSN using the PSEye. And San Francisco to New Zealand is not quite on the \”otherside of the world\”.

      Video quality on our end was quite rough, but looks like they got us just fine. We use Skype too, and we had better results than we normally get on that.

      People\’s experiences will vary depending on their setup and who they are talking to I guess.

  • Awesome, love the PS Eye interviews :) Had no idea the quality was so good on them… I tried out a random webcam which wasn’t as good but love how great this one is. Great interview, hope we get more of these in the future!

  • well that says a lot for the game, everybody loved the eye chat interview more then the game itself. and also a great example of how you guys are able to over hype a game with the “incredibly cool game” comment you just made, this game has been re-done a million different ways, the only way i can see this game being incredibly cool is if the price is 1.99

  • As soon as this game makes it out I am going to buy it!! Any hopes for a PSP version? ;)

    Oh and the interviews over PS Network idea is GREAT! Keep doing it like that please!!

    • Thanks for the support. Depending on the success of the PSN version we may look at a PSP version as well.

  • this could have been done many months ago…

  • Very good idea guys, nice one.

    Lip sync was a tad off though, very offputting

  • Interesting approach to doing interviews. I actually liked it. Should allow for you to get more interviews done since you wouldn’t have to meet up with the actual person and they can pick a 10-20 minute time span when they’re free to set it up.

    On another note, after seeing this, would it be possible to get these kinds of videos (developer commentary/interviews/walkthroughs) added to the PSN for upcoming games? I think it would be a nice feature to get some gameplay before a game releases but also some developer insight to go along with it.

  • Great interview.

    Mario handled himself really well and was consistent and clear covering all aspects one after the other, I feel that I have full insight now.

  • Hey… great! A PSEye video conference. When will I be able to upload an Eye video to YouTube directly from my PS3???

  • Wait, so Sony wouldn’t Spring to fly you to Wellington for the interview?

    Can’t wait for Shatter.

  • This game looks AMAZING. Such a nice change up of the Arachnoid / Breakout game mechanic. Ironically it gave me some more ideas for news styles of gameplay for this oldschool style game…

    I’ll actually feed on @Microshock’s comment. I think it would be awesome if you could have in game videochat using the playstation eye while playing against your friend online in a game like this… Seems like it’d be completely doable from a tech standpoint.

  • I like the idea of conducting long-distance interviews using the PlayStation Eye. I hope this is just the first of many.

    With regard to Shatter…it was a pleasant surprise to see this at E3! GripShift (also by Sidhe) was fun on both PSP and PS3, and I’m sure Shatter will be great as well.

    I’ve been wondering what kind of control schemes would be supported, as most similar ball-and-bat games (like Breakout, Arkanoid, etc.) tend to be difficult to control with a joypad or analog thumbstick. Games like this often demand quick, precise movements and sudden changes of direction, and most joypad/thumbstick implementations I’ve seen can’t keep up when the action gets frantic (not like the old rotational paddle controls, anyway). I’d like to know how Shatter tackles this area of control. Perhaps mouse control could also be included as an option for those who would like to use it.

    • We don\’t have mouse support, but allow DPAD and thumbstick control of the bat.

      There is some secret sauce with how the game deals with the simultaneous need for quick movements versus precise, smaller movements.

      It has been through a lot of usability testing, and most people seem to like it.

Please enter your date of birth.

Date of birth fields