The Differences between Kinect 2 and Playstation Eye are Negligible

[ArnoldRimmer]

Judging only by the technical possibilities that both devices would theoretically allow for, PS Eye is actually even better/more versatile than Kinect.

And I'm not just claiming that, I'm proving it:

- Both devices offer an array of microphones, so their audio capabilities can be considered equal

- Both devices offer a RGB video stream, like a webcam does. Both cameras offer HD resolutions, Kinect 2's RGB video stream resolution is a little higher though, but that slightly higher resolution does not allow for significant additional possibilities that just wouldn't be possible with PS Eye's lower resolution

So up to this point, they offer pretty much the same hardware features. But both devices each have some additional hardware that the other one doesn't have, and which allows for different possibilities:

- Kinect has special and rather expensive hardware for depth/distance-sensing. That depth/distance information is mainly being used for skeleton tracking

- PS4's PS Eye has a second RGB camera, effectively making it a real, steoreoscopic 3D camera. This additional piece of hardware allows the PS4 to do something Kinect is not capable of:
Capturing 3D video, as used for example by modern 3DTVs

Now this 3D video stream could for example be used for 3D video chat (think Skype in 3D), but it could, at least theoretically, also be used to calculate the same depth/distance information that the expensive hardware inside Kinect provides. It would probably be a bit less accurate than Kinect's depth/distance information, but good enough to do things like skeleton tracking as well.

So there you have it: PS Eye can theoretically do everything Kinect can, maybe just a little less accurate. But Kinect can not do everything PS Eye can, because of the missing stereoscopic 3D camera.

This is pure theory though; it would require Sony to put a lot of work to develop an extensive software library, just like Microsoft did for Kinect. And there's no indication that they have any plans to do so, especially since interest in Kinect dropped so quickly. So in practice, Kinect 2 will be highly integrated, while PS Eye will probably be rather useless.