Culture
47%
Max Knoblauch

A fresh lawsuit filed against Sony alleges that video games sold on the PlayStation Store are 47% more expensive than their disc counterparts. Considering costs associated with manufacturing, packaging, and distribution aren’t associated with digital games, the cost discrepancy is shocking.

The lawsuit, filed in the Netherlands, accuses Sony of artificially keeping game prices high and echoes a similar multibillion-dollar lawsuit filed against Sony in the UK in 2022. Another lawsuit filed in Portugal makes many of the same claims.

Sony stopped allowing retailers to sell (and therefore discount) digital game keys in 2019 ahead of the debut of its PS5 console. Both Nintendo and Microsoft’s Xbox allow for third-party digital code sales.

Sony’s latest version of the PS5, the souped-up $700 PS5 Pro, is all-digital and customers who want to use physical games have to buy a separate disc drive for $80. Sony sold 9.5 million consoles in its most recent quarter, up 16% from the 2023 holiday season. The company, which hiked its gaming outlook for the year, said digital software sales rose about 14% year over year.

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OpenAI set to air a minute-long Super Bowl ad for a second consecutive year, per WSJ

OpenAI is expected to broadcast a lengthy commercial at Super Bowl LX, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday.

Having aired its first-ever paid ad at last year’s Big Game, the ChatGPT maker is set to take another 60-second ad slot during NBC’s broadcast on February 8, according to people familiar with the matter.

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Millie Giles

Tamagotchis are making a comeback, 3 decades after first becoming a global toy craze

If you were a ’90s kid, you might remember the craze around little egg-shaped toys with an 8-bit digital screen, displaying an ambiguous pet-thing that demanded food and attention.

Now, on the brand’s 30th anniversary, the Tamagotchi — the Japanese pocket-sized virtual pet that launched a thousand cute and needy tech companions, from Nintendogs to fluffy AI robots — is making a minor comeback.

Tamagotchi Google Search Trends
Sherwood News

Looking at Google Trends data, searches for “tamagotchi” spiked in December in the US, up around 80% from just six months prior, with the most search volume in almost two decades.

While the toys are popular Christmas gifts, with interest volumes often seen ticking up in December each year, the sudden interest might also have something to do with the birthday celebrations that creator and manufacturer Bandai Namco are putting on, including a Tokyo exhibition that opened on Wednesday.

Game, set, hatch

More broadly, modern consumers appear to have a growing obsession with collectibles (see: Labubu mania), as well as a taste for nostalgia (see: the iPod revival, among many other trends).

But, having finally hit 100 million sales in September last year, the brand itself is probably just glad to exist, giving a whole new generation the chance to experience the profound grief of an unexpected Tamagotchi death.

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