Sony is halting sales of its Aibo robotic puppy in Japan, the company has said, eight years after the latest model of its interactive android pet became an instant hit.<\/p>\n
The Thursday\u00a0announcement marks the end of an era for loyal fans of the high-tech toy, which develops its own personality and can perform tricks like waving and mimicking its owner.<\/p>\n
The ERS-1000 model of Aibo \u2014 a 30-centimeter-long hound with flapping ears, eyes that show various emotions, and a nose camera \u2014 charmed customers on its launch in 2018, clocking up 20,000 sales in the first six months.<\/p>\n
It was also a big comeback for Sony\u2019s robot dog.<\/p>\n
The first iteration of Aibo came out in 1999, followed by numerous models over the years \u2014 from angular metallic-silver bots to more cuddly round-faced versions \u2014 with more than 150,000 units sold.<\/p>\n
But by 2006, Sony, facing a tough business environment, pulled the plug on Aibo, seen as something of a frivolous luxury.<\/p>\n
Sony said in a short statement on Thursday that Japan sales of the current ERS-1000 model will be discontinued once stock runs out.<\/p>\n
Services such as access to tech support, replacement parts and subscriptions to online cloud plans to store the robodog\u2019s memories will be maintained, it said.<\/p>\n
The company did not immediately respond to questions on plans for a potential new generation of Aibo, or on sales in the United States, where it retails for more than $3,000.<\/p>\n
But in Japan, fans had a vocal reaction to the news.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been in a daze ever since I saw the announcement. Until more information comes out, I need to be careful not to mess up my daily life from overthinking,\u201d wrote X user Yachi.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo it\u2019s over already? It didn\u2019t last until the golden age of physical AI,\u201d Yusuke Ando wrote.<\/p>\n
An X user called Daiyamondo had a suggestion for Sony: \u201cNext time you develop one, could you make it half the size, and cat-shaped?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sony is halting sales of its Aibo robotic puppy in Japan, the company has said, eight years after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":47705,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1695,32942,8,33,2174,8171,2042],"class_list":["post-47704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-japan","tag-ai","tag-aibo","tag-japan","tag-nihon","tag-pets","tag-robots","tag-sony"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47704"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47704\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}