[Freddy]

NEWS ITEM
Yahoo Asai.

(Kyodo) Sony Corp. said Thursday it will cease manufacturing the popular robot dog AIBO by the end of March and stop developing a new version of the humanoid robot QRIO soon, as part of its efforts to improve profitability....

... The latest AIBO is the third generation model and sells for 194,250 yen, the company said, adding it had sold a total of 150,000 units around the world by last September.

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[FuzzieDice]

Aw man! That's too bad. They had something going good with QRIO, something that could be a contender to ASIMO. Profitability has been the downfall of many developements that could have become something very cool and useful.

[Freddy]

Yep its a shame, I bet the costs are astronimical.  Even so, it's not the kind of 'toy' people are going to throw away so I bet in years to come there will still be plenty running around.  They are like a new tribe of 150,000 beings wandering the earth. :smiley
Also I think they probably have plenty of other things up their sleeve.