A new rumor surfacing today states that Apple may have acquired Zurich based Faceshift. The company's application brings avatars to life driving new forms of communication and storytelling. At this year's Gaming Developer Conference (GDC) Faceshift showed off a performance recording session that had been created at OMUK, the home of game immersion voice recording.

Below you can see two jumbo images where the user is shown in the top right corner making a face that is transferred to the gaming character in realtime.

Apple is on record with a couple of patents regarding their work in creating an Avatar app for the iPad that at the time looked very close to being finished. One of the patent images is noted below.

While MacRumors Eric Slivka pieced together this rumor on some pretty flimsy evidence, his conviction may indicate that there's more to this story than is being presented today.

Did Apple really acquire Faceshift? While only time will tell, it looks like it could be a good fit for Apple as a gaming developer tool and a spinoff app that could be a lot of fun for the iPad that needs something cool for consumers. In 2005 Steve Jobs introduced Photo Booth and for its time it was a fun new app.

I think that in 2015 with Apple's advanced A-series processors and having acquired companies like PrimeSense and LiNX, it might be time to show off a new app like Faceshift. But for now, it's just a rumor, a very thin rumor that just happens to one that could be a lot of fun if it ever comes to life. To see the quality of this app, check out this Faceshift webpage.

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