Background:

Sony Interactive Entertainment believes it’s beneficial for children to exercise their ingenuity using their hands and minds; to think outside of the box and hit those a-ha moments. So rather than simply providing content, it developed “toio,” an experiential robot toy platform, to give kids the opportunity to create games by making things and experiencing programming themselves. The campaign objective was to develop the first game software for toio and manage the overall branding, establishing the toio experience.

Idea:

We considered two social considerations in Japan: the upcoming 2020 start of mandatory programming education in elementary schools, and the fact that robot contests for high school and college students continue to be popular. Our creative idea centered around teaching kids the joy of exercising their ingenuity through playing games at the age they generally start online gaming. With this focus in mind, we developed the first “toio Collection,” software that integrates analog and digital qualities.

Execution:

toio Collection comes with five games. It works with toio cubes, which can talk to each other and receive commands from toio consoles. Real-time geolocation allows kids to move their toio cubes however they want, while a six-axis positioning system works to judge who wins. We provided playing instructions on the official website, and made parts easily available at stores like 100-yen shops, to allow users to keep updating the games and personalizing their way of playing.

Results:

The promotional event was a huge success. Pre-orders sold out and about 84 media outlets picked up the release event. Users posted their toio decorated with handmade characters on Twitter and a user-generated community was born.