toio is an

educational Education is a purposeful activity directed at achieving certain aims, such as transmitting knowledge or fostering skills and character traits. These aims may include the development of understanding, rationality, kindness, and honesty. Vari ...

video game console developed by

Sony Interactive Entertainment Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE), formerly known as Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE), is a multinational video game industry, video game and digital entertainment company wholly owned by multinational conglomerate Sony. The SIE Group is ma ...

. It consists of two miniature robots, a docking station with a monochrome display, a cartridge port to load software onto, and two controllers. After shipping to crowdfunding backers in January 2018, the platform was released across Japan in March 2019.

Development

The product was conceived by Alexis André, based out of Sony Computer Science Laboratories' Tokyo division. It was unveiled at the Tokyo Toy Show and was put up for pre-order on Sony Corporation's First Flight

crowdfunding Crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising money from a large number of people, typically via the internet. Crowdfunding is a form of crowdsourcing and alternative finance. In 2015, over was raised worldwide by crow ...

platform in June 2017.

Bandai is a Japanese multinational toy manufacturer and distributor headquartered in Taitō, Tokyo. Its international branches, Bandai Namco Toys & Collectables America and Bandai UK, are respectively headquartered in Irvine, California and Richmond ...

LEGO Lego ( , ; stylized as LEGO) is a line of plastic construction toys that are manufactured by The Lego Group, a privately held company based in Billund, Denmark. The company's flagship product, Lego, consists of variously colored interlocking ...

and

Sony Music Sony Music Entertainment (SME), also known as simply Sony Music, is an American multinational music company. Being owned by the parent conglomerate Sony Group Corporation, it is part of the Sony Music Group, which is owned by Sony Entertainment ...

were announced as partners in development and content creation. In late 2017,

took over the project as it offered a challenge beyond the television. Backers began receiving toio in January 2018. Shortly after the project shifted to the gaming division, the hardware and software was significantly redesigned to improve stability. Sony offered the revised version of toio to those who crowdfunded the original at no additional cost. This version began being sold to the general public in Japan on March 20, 2019. Sony made the platform open source and released a

GitHub GitHub, Inc. () is an Internet hosting service for software development and version control using Git. It provides the distributed version control of Git plus access control, bug tracking, software feature requests, task management, continuous ...

repository on June 13, 2019. On September 30, 2020, Sony and Morikatron released a free

Unity Unity may refer to: Buildings * Unity Building, Oregon, Illinois, US; a historic building * Unity Building (Chicago), Illinois, US; a skyscraper * Unity Buildings, Liverpool, UK; two buildings in England * Unity Chapel, Wyoming, Wisconsin, US; a h ...

software development kit A software development kit (SDK) is a collection of software development tools in one installable package. They facilitate the creation of applications by having a compiler, debugger and sometimes a software framework. They are normally specific to ...

designed for toio.

Kits

Alongside the hardware itself, Sony has released a variety of themed kits that include game cartridges, additional toys for the robots and books with activities.

Reception

The platform and its games have won multiple Japanese Good Design Awards between 2017 and 2020. ''Papercraft Creatures - Gesundroid'' made the Jury's Selection in the Entertainment category during the 22nd Japan Media Arts Festival in 2019. In 2020, the hardware won a Red Dot Design Award and an iF Product Design Award.

References

External links

* {{Sony Interactive Entertainment Educational toys Japan-only video game hardware Sony consoles Sony products Products introduced in 2019 Sony Interactive Entertainment 2019 in video gaming