In 2004, Sony Cambridge started to work on a prototype called Simian for PlayStation 3. Using the PlayStation Eye camera, players would interact with a number of small alien monkey creatures and play through an adventure game set on an alien jungle planet. The team at Sony Cambridge created a demo in which the player could communicate with one of the simians by gesture recognition and a limited verbal communication palette. However, the project was cancelled early in pre-production, with the former art director at Sony Cambridge speculating that this was due to the fact that the game was too ambitious for the actual technology capabilities. As he said, the central concept was scaled down and the tech morphed into Sony London Studio’s EyePet game, which would eventually feature a similar simian-like creature.
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U64 is an archive with articles, screens and videos for cancelled, beta & unseen videogames. Every change & cut creates a different gaming experience: we would like to save some documents about this evolution for curiosity, historic and artistic preservation.