A new email from Sony says that PlayStation will require players to verify their age later this year to keep using communication features like messages and voice chat. Insider-Gaming reports: The initiative comes from the goal of providing "safe, age-appropriate experiences for players and families while respecting their privacy" and providing "meaningful control over their gaming experiences." The age-verification process will be implemented globally, and players will need to verify their age to continue using PlayStation communication services, such as messages and voice chat. If the player opts not to verify their age, they can still use other services, such as games, trophies, and the store. Only the communication experience will be affected if you choose not to verify your age. PlayStation didn't provide a date for when players will need to begin the verification process.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Spotify and several major record labels, including UMG, Sony, and Warner, secured a $322 million default judgment against the unknown operators of Anna's Archive. The shadow library failed to appear in court and briefly released millions of tracks that were scraped from Spotify via BitTorrent. In addition to the monetary penalty, a permanent injunction required domain registrars and other parties to suspend the site's domain names. [...]

The music labels get the statutory maximum of $150,000 in damages for around 50 works. Spotify adds a DMCA circumvention claim of $2,500 for 120,000 music files, bringing the total to more than $322 million. The plaintiff previously described their damages request as "extremely conservative." The DMCA claim is based only on the 120,000 files, not the full 2.8 million that were released. Had they applied the $2,500 rate to all released files, the damages figure would exceed $7 billion. Anna's Archive did not show up in court, and the operators of the site remain unidentified. The judgment attempts to address this directly, by ordering Anna's Archive to file a compliance report within ten business days, under penalty of perjury, that includes valid contact information for the site and its managing agents.

Whether the site will comply with this order is highly uncertain. For now, the monetary judgment is mostly a victory on paper, as recouping money from an unknown entity is impossible. For this reason, the music companies also requested a permanent injunction. In addition to the damages award, [Judge Jed Rakoff] entered a permanent worldwide injunction covering ten Anna's Archive domains: annas-archive.org, .li, .se, .in, .pm, .gl, .ch, .pk, .gd, and .vg. Domain registries and registrars of record, along with hosting and internet service providers, are ordered to permanently disable access to those domains, disable authoritative nameservers, cease hosting services, and preserve evidence that could identify the site's operators.

The judgment names specific third parties bound by those obligations, including Public Interest Registry, Cloudflare, Switch Foundation, The Swedish Internet Foundation, Njalla SRL, IQWeb FZ-LLC, Immaterialism Ltd., Hosting Concepts B.V., Tucows Domains Inc., and OwnRegistrar, Inc. Anna's Archive is also ordered to destroy all copies of works scraped from Spotify and to file a compliance report within ten business days, under penalty of perjury, including valid contact information for the site and its managing agents. That last requirement could prove significant, given that the identity of the site's operators remains unknown.

Sony Pictures chief Tom Rothman urged theater owners to cut down the roughly 30 minutes of trailers and ads before movies. "Get off the ad crack," Rothman told the audience at CinemaCon this week. "Get rid of the endless advertising and substantially shorten the long pre-shows." Variety reports: He noted that frequent moviegoers now show up a half hour late to avoid all the spots (something that reserved seating has made easier than ever before). Rothman said that means many people "don't even see the trailers," which results in "enticements gone to waste." Rothman predicted that the 2026 box office, which has already benefitted from hits like "Super Mario Galaxy Movie" and "Project Hail Mary," will rebound in a big way. But he acknowledged that attendance still trails pre-pandemic levels.

Rothman has been a vociferous defender of the big screen, pushing studios to embrace longer windows so that movies will stay in cinemas longer. That was a theme that Rothman returned to at CinemaCon, pressing exhibitors to hold strong and agree not to show movies that quickly appear on streaming services or on-demand platforms. "Enforce longer windows," Rothman said. "Yes, even if that means you cannot play every film."

In addition to stumping for exhibition, Rothman has practically begged Hollywood to invest in new stories along with all the franchise fare. In a recent New York Times op-ed, for instance, Rothman, the longest-serving studio chief, wrote, "For all the success of films driven by existing intellectual property, originality is essential to movies. Neither movie theaters nor the art form itself can survive without at least some originality. After all, you can't make a sequel to nothing."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Cord Cutters News: Sony has notified owners of its recent BRAVIA television models that significant changes to the built-in TV Guide for its OTA TV antenna users and related menu features will take effect starting in late May 2026. The update affects a range of premium sets released between 2023 and 2025, marking another instance of feature adjustments for older smart TV hardware as manufacturers shift focus toward newer product lines. The changes primarily target the program guide functionality for over-the-air antenna TV channels received via the ATSC tuner. After the cutoff date, program information may fail to display on certain channels, limiting the guide's usefulness for planning viewing schedules. Users will often see listings only for channels they have recently watched, rather than a comprehensive overview of available broadcasts. Additionally, channel logos that previously appeared in the guide will disappear, and any thumbnail images accompanying program descriptions will no longer load or show.

Further modifications will appear in the television's menu system. For users relying on connected set-top boxes, the dedicated Set Top Box menu option will be removed entirely. In its place, a simpler Control menu will surface, streamlining access but eliminating some specialized navigation previously available. Program thumbnails, which provided visual previews in various menu sections, will also cease to appear across affected interfaces. These adjustments stem from Sony's ongoing efforts to manage backend services and data feeds that support enhanced guide features on its Google TV-powered BRAVIA lineup. As television ecosystems evolve rapidly with advancements in processing power, artificial intelligence integration, and cloud-based content delivery, companies periodically retire select capabilities on prior-generation hardware to optimize resources. The 2023 through 2025 models, while still offering excellent picture quality through advanced OLED and LCD panels with features like XR processing, now fall into the category of devices receiving scaled-back support. These are the models impacted:

2025 models: Bravia 8 II (XR80M2), Bravia 5 (XR50)
2024 models: Bravia 9 (XR90), Bravia 8 (XR80), Bravia 7 (XR70)
2023 models: Bravia A95L series

"RGB LED TVs have been the talk of the TV world this year," argues The Verge, with models coming from all the manufacturers." And the first one of 2026 is here — the UR9 from China's Hisense — "the first look at the viability of the new backlight technology outside of demo rooms." They call it "a step above the traditional mini-LED TVs of years past." and "a great first shot against OLED's bow." HDR is colorful and accurate, it has great brightness, and it is capable of showing colors beyond the P3 color space for movies and TV shows that have wider color. But at $3,500, the 65-inch model I reviewed is priced comparably to high-end OLEDs from LG and Samsung, which is tough competition... One of the touted benefits of RGB LED TVs is their ability to achieve 100 percent of the BT.2020 color space... [But] even if a TV is capable of extending beyond P3 and into BT.2020 colors (which the UR9 absolutely is), with most movies and TV shows it doesn't matter. It's also a bit of a chicken-or-the-egg situation — we need TVs that can accurately display BT.2020 before the color space is fully adopted by TV and movie creators, but if there's no content, why get a BT.2020 TV?
BGR points out this new mini LED TV also "includes a DisplayPort (DP) connection alongside HDMI."

"Well, technically, it's a USB-C port that delivers full DisplayPort functionality, but it's labeled as DisplayPort." The TV also has three HDMI 2.1 ports, making it a great choice for game consoles and PCs. And while HDMI 2.1 supports 4K/120Hz, the Hisense UR9S will deliver 4K/170Hz or 4K/180Hz visuals [a higher refresh rate] when connected to a gaming PC via DisplayPort. Better yet, the TV is AMD FreeSync-compatible, and Hisense plans on adding Dolby Vision 2 HDR in future firmware.

The Hisense UR9S will be available in four sizes: 65, 75, 85, and 100 inches. It's worth mentioning that the two largest sizes will max out at 180Hz for the refresh rate, while the 65 and 75-inch screens come in at 170Hz. This is exciting news for serious gamers looking for the best gaming TVs and a huge step forward in the evolution of panel tech. RGB Mini LED TVs were showcased by a handful of manufacturers at CES 2026, including Samsung, Sony, and LG; so Hisense will certainly have some competition.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Following on the heels of the landmark Cox v. Sony ruling, the Supreme Court has vacated the contributory copyright infringement verdict against ISP Grande Communications, ordering the Fifth Circuit to reconsider its decision in light of the new precedent. [...] The order (PDF) effectively removes the case from the Supreme Court docket, urging the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to take another look at its decision in light of the new ruling.

Given the similarities between the two cases, it is no surprise that the Supreme Court came to this conclusion. It is now up to the Fifth Circuit to revisit whether Grande's conduct meets the intent threshold that was established in Cox. That is a significantly higher bar than the one applied in the original verdict, which found that continuing to provide service to known infringers was enough to establish material contribution.

The music companies previously said they sent over a million copyright infringement notices, but that Grande failed to terminate even a single subscriber account in response. However, without proof of active inducement, these absolute numbers carry less weight now. Whether this translates into a win for Grande on remand remains to be seen. For now, however, the original $47 million verdict is further away than ever.

Apple's 50th anniversary got celebrated in weird and wild ways. CEO Tim Cook posted a special 30-second video rewinding backwards through the years of Apple's products until it reaches the Apple I. Podcaster Lex Fridman noticed if you play the sound in reverse, "It's the Think Different ad music, pitched up." TechRadar played seven 50-year-old Apple I games on an emulator, including Star Trek, Blackjack, Lunar Lander, and of course, Conway's Game of Life.

And Macworld ranked Apple's 50 most influential people. (Their top five?)

5. Tony Fadell (iPhone co-creator/"father of the iPod")
4. Sir Jony Ive
3. Steve Wozniak
2. Tim Cook
1. Steve Jobs

One of the most thoughtful celebraters was David Pogue, who's spent 42 years of writing about Apple (starting as a MacWorld columnist and the author of Mac for Dummies, one of the first "...For Dummies" books ever published in the early 1990s.) Now 63 years old, Pogue spent the last two years working on a 608-page hardcover book titled Apple: The First 50 Years. But on his Substack Pogue, contemplated his own history with the company — including several interactions with Steve Jobs. Pogue remembers how Jobs "hated open systems. He wanted to make self-contained, beautiful machines. He didn't want them polluted by modifications."

The tech blog Daring Fireball notes that Pogue actually interviewed Scott Forstall (who'd led the iPhone's software development team) for his new book, "and got this story, about just how far Steve Jobs thought Apple could go to expand the iPhone's software library while not opening it to third-party developers." "I want you to make a list of every app any customer would ever want to use," he told Forstall. "And then the two of us will prioritize that list. And then I'm going to write you a blank check, and you are going to build the largest development team in the history of the world, to build as many apps as you can as quickly as possible." Forstall, dubious, began composing a list. But on the side, he instructed his engineers to build the security foundations of an app store into the iPhone's software-"against Steve's knowledge and wishes," Forstall says. [...]

Two weeks after the iPhone's release, someone figured out how to "jailbreak" the iPhone: to hack it so that they could install custom apps. Jobs burst into Forstall's office. "You have to shut this down!" But Forstall didn't see the harm of developers spending their efforts making the iPhone better. "If they add something malicious, we'll ship an update tomorrow to protect against that. But if all they're doing is adding apps that are useful, there's no reason to break that." Jobs, troubled, reluctantly agreed.

Week by week, more cool apps arrived, available only to jailbroken phones. One day in October, Jobs read an article about some of the coolest ones. "You know what?" he said. "We should build an app store."

Forstall, delighted, revealed his secret plan. He had followed in the footsteps of Burrell Smith (the Mac's memory-expansion circuit) and Bob Belleville (the Sony floppy-drive deal): He'd disobeyed Jobs and wound up saving the project.
In fact, the book "includes new interviews with 150 key people who made the journey, including Steve Wozniak, John Sculley, Jony Ive, and many current designers, engineers, and executives" (according to its description on Amazon). Pogue's book even revisits the story of Steve Jobs proving an iPod prototype could be smaller by tossing it into an aquarium, shouting "If there's air bubbles in there, there's still room. Make it smaller!" But Pogue's book "added that there's a caveat to this compelling bit of Apple lore," reports NPR.

"It never actually happened. It's just one more Apple myth."

For the "foreseeable future," Sony says it has stopped accepting new orders for most of its CFexpress and SD memory card lines due to the an ongoing memory supply shortage. "Due to the global shortage of semiconductors (memory) and other factors, it is anticipated that supply will not be able to meet demand for CFexpress memory cards and SD memory cards for the foreseeable future," the company said in a notice. "Therefore, we have decided to temporarily suspend the acceptance of orders from our authorized dealers and from customers at the Sony Store from March 27, 2026 onwards. PetaPixel reports: The suspension includes all of Sony's memory card lines, including CFexpress Type A, CFexpress Type B, and SD cards. The 240GB, 480GB, 960GB, and 1920GB capacity Type A cards have been suspended, as have the 480GB and 240GB Type B cards. The full gamut of Sony's high-end SD cards has also been suspended, including the 256GB, 128GB, and 64GB TOUGH-branded cards and the lower-end 512GB, 256GB, 128GB, and 256GB plainly-branded Sony cards, which cap out at V60 speeds. Even Sony's lower-end, V30 128GB and 64GB SD cards have been suspended, showcasing that the SSD shortage affects all types of solid state, not just the high-end ones.

It appears that only the 960GB CFexpress Type B card and the lowest-end SF-UZ series SD cards remain in production. However, those UHS-I SD cards are discontinued in the United States outside of a scant few retailers and resellers. "We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may cause our customers," Sony concludes.

Memory and storage shortages and price hikes have "steadily rippled outward across all kinds of consumer tech," reports Ars Technica.

"Today's bad news comes from Sony, which is raising prices for PlayStation 5 consoles in the US just eight months after their last price hike." The drive-less Digital Edition will increase from $500 to $600; the base PS5 with an optical drive will increase from $550 to $650; and the PS5 Pro is going up from $750 to a whopping $900. At the beginning of 2025, these consoles cost $450, $500, and $700, respectively...

RAM and flash memory chips are in short supply primarily because of demand from AI data centers — memory manufacturers have shifted more production toward making the kind of memory found in AI accelerators like Nvidia's H200, leaving less for the consumer market. And the situation is unlikely to improve any time soon, barring a major shift in demand from the AI industry.

The National Videogame Museum has acquired an extremely rare MSF-1 development kit, believed to be the oldest surviving prototype of the canceled Nintendo PlayStation. Engadget reports: Nicknamed the Nintendo PlayStation, the idea was that a new CD-ROM format backed by Sony would be added to the cartridge-based Super NES, resulting in a hybrid console that could play both. The partnership didn't last long, though, with Nintendo backing out before it ever really got off the ground, announcing that it would instead be working with Philips. Sony decided to make the PlayStation on its own instead, in an act of revenge that you have to say paid off in the long run, and we never did get to see Crash Bandicoot running around the Mushroom Kingdom. Still, the short-lived Nintendo PlayStation remains a fascinating what-if scenario in video game history, and the USA's National Video Museum has acquired the original development kit.

Sony is reportedly abandoning its recent push to bring major PlayStation games to PC and will instead keep most single-player titles exclusive to the PlayStation 5. According to Bloomberg, the shift back toward console exclusivity may be driven by weaker PC sales and concerns about diluting the PlayStation brand. From the report: Online games such as Marathon and Marvel Tokon will still be released across multiple platforms, but single-player titles such as last year's samurai hit Ghost of Yotei and the upcoming action game Saros will remain exclusive to PlayStation 5, said the people, who asked not to be identified because they weren't authorized to talk publicly about the company's strategy.

The people cautioned that things could change in the future due to the unpredictable nature of the video-game industry and that Sony's plans are constantly shifting. But in recent weeks PlayStation scrapped plans to bring Ghost of Yotei and other internally developed games to PC. Two games made by external developers but published by PlayStation, Death Stranding 2 and the upcoming Kena: Scars of Kosmora, are still planned for release on PC this year.

In her first major interview as Microsoft's new gaming chief, Asha Sharma said that "great games" must deliver emotional resonance and a distinct creative voice, while making clear that she has "no tolerance for bad AI." Stepping in after Phil Spencer's retirement, she's pledging consistency, community trust, and a human-first approach to storytelling as Xbox enters a new era. Variety reports: Sharma was quick in laying out her top priorities for Microsoft Gaming in an internal memo announcing her promotion, noting "great games," "the return of Xbox" and the "future of play" as her three main commitments to the gaming community. So first, what makes a great game for Sharma, whose roles prior to CoreAI include top positions at Instacart and Meta? The new Microsoft Gaming CEO tells Variety it's all about games with "deep emotional resonance" and "a distinct point of view." She wants to develop stories that make players "feel something," like the kind of feelings Campo Santo's 2016 first-person mystery "Firewatch" elicited in her.

Sharma takes on the mantle as head of the leading competitor to Sony's PlayStation and Nintendo knowing full well she's entering the role as an outsider to the larger gaming community and has "a lot to learn" still. But Sharma says she's got a commitment to "being grounded in what the community is telling us." "I'm coming into gaming as a platform builder," Sharma said, adding that her goal is to "earn the right to be trusted by players and developers" and show the fanbase that "consistency" over time. In her interview with Variety, Sharma acknowledged the tumultuous state of the gaming industry, referencing Matthew Ball's recent State of Video Gaming in 2026 report as evidence that the larger "transformation" of the sector is "protecting what we believe in while remaining open-minded about the future."

Due to her strong background in AI, initial reactions to Sharma's appointment have raised concerns about what her specific views are on the use of generative AI in game development. Sharma says her stance is simple: she has "no tolerance for bad AI." "AI has long been part of gaming and will continue to be," Sharma said, noting that gaming needs new "growth engines," but that "great stories are created by humans."

Panasonic is handing over the manufacturing, marketing, and sales of its TVs to Shenzhen-based Skyworth, effectively exiting in-house TV production. Ars Technica reports: Skyworth is a Shenzhen-headquartered TV brand. The company claims to be "a top three global provider of the Android TV platform." In July, research firm Omdia reported that Skyworth was one of the top-five TV brands by sales revenue in Q1 2025; however, Skyworth hasn't been able to maintain that position regularly. Panasonic made its announcement at a "launch event," FlatpanelsHD reported today. During the event, a Panasonic representative reportedly said: "Under the agreement the new partner will lead sales, marketing, and logistics across the region, while Panasonic provide expertise and quality assurance to uphold its renowned audiovisual standards with full joint development on top-end OLED models."

Panasonic also said that it will provide support "for all Panasonic TVs sold up to March 2026 and all those available from April." Skyworth-made Panasonic TVs will be sold in the US and Europe. In the latter geography, the companies are aiming for double-digit market share. [...] The news means there's virtually no TV production happening in Japan anymore, as other Japanese companies, like Sharp, Toshiba, Hitachi, and Pioneer, have already exited TV production. Earlier this year, Sony announced that it was ceding control of its TV hardware business to TCL.

Xbox chief and Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer is leaving Microsoft after nearly 40 years at the company. "Meanwhile, Xbox President Sarah Bond, "long thought by many both inside and outside of Microsoft to be Spencer's heir apparent, has resigned," reports IGN. From the report: The new CEO of Microsoft Gaming will be Asha Sharma, currently the President of Microsoft's CoreAI product. Finally, Xbox Game Studios head Matt Booty is being promoted to Chief Content Officer and will work closely with Sharma. "I want to thank Phil for his extraordinary leadership and partnership," Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in an email sent to Microsoft staff. "Over 38 years at Microsoft, including 12 years leading Gaming, Phil helped transform what we do and how we do it." [...]

Spencer was named Head of Xbox in March of 2014, when he was tasked with righting a ship that had made a number of product choices and policy decisions that rubbed core gamers the wrong way in the run-up to the launch of the Xbox One in Fall 2013. Long hailed by gamers as being one of their own, Spencer could frequently be found on Xbox Live, playing games regularly with fellow Xbox gamers and racking up a healthy Gamerscore. His first major move when put in charge was decoupling the Kinect 2.0 peripheral from the Xbox One package, thus immediately reducing the new console's price by $100 to $399, matching the day-one price of Sony's PlayStation 4. He spearheaded the much-heralded backwards compatibility movement within Xbox, the Xbox Game Pass service was born under his watch, and accessibility made major advances during his tenure in both hardware and software. Xbox Play Anywhere, which sought to let gamers play their Xbox games on any device, be it a PC, console, or handheld, isn't new but has been a big recent focal point.

Spencer's time running Xbox will perhaps be most remembered for Microsoft's $69 billion acquisition of Activision-Blizzard-King in 2022, which took almost two years to achieve regulatory approval from various agencies around the world. But Spencer began trying to solve for Xbox's dearth of first-party games in 2018, when the first wave of studio acquisitions occurred. Prior to the Activision deal, Spencer's biggest move came with the $7.5 billion acquisition of ZeniMax, parent company of Bethesda, in 2020. The deal gave Xbox total ownership of Bethesda Game Studios and its Fallout and Elder Scrolls franchises along with id Software and its Doom and Quake IPs, among many others. Questions arose from there about whether or not that meant all of Xbox's new studios would produce games exclusively for Xbox consoles, and while some games were kept off of PlayStation platforms temporarily, many weren't and most now seem to come to PS5 eventually, if not on day one.

Sony Group has developed a technology that can identify the underlying music used in tunes generated by AI, making it possible for songwriters to seek compensation from AI developers if their music was used. From a report: Sony Group's technology analyzes which musicians' songs were used in learning and generating music. It can quantify the contribution of each original work, such as "30% of the music used by the Beatles and 10% by Queen," for example.

If the AI developer agrees to cooperate for the analysis, Sony Group will obtain data by connecting to the developer's base model system. When cooperation is not attainable, the technology estimates the original work by comparing AI-generated music with existing music. The AI boom has sparked numerous cases in which AI developers are accused of using copyrighted music, video and writing without permission to train machines. In the music industry, AI-generated songs using the voices of well-known singers have been distributed online. The Japanese company thinks the technology will help create a system that distributes revenue generated by AI music to original songwriters based on their contribution.

Sony is considering delaying the debut of its next PlayStation console to 2028 or even 2029 as a global shortage of memory chips -- driven by the AI industry's rapidly growing appetite for the same DRAM that goes into gaming hardware, smartphones, and laptops -- squeezes supply and sends prices surging, Bloomberg News reported Monday.

A delay of that magnitude would upend Sony's carefully orchestrated strategy to sustain user engagement between hardware generations. The shortage traces back to Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron diverting the bulk of their manufacturing toward high-bandwidth memory for Nvidia's AI accelerators, leaving less capacity for conventional DRAM. The cost of one type of DRAM jumped 75% between December and January alone. Nintendo is also contemplating raising the price of its Switch 2 console in 2026.

Sony will ship its last batch of Blu-ray recorders this month, according to Kyodo News, ending the company's decades-long run in a product category it helped create. The recorders targeted exclusively the Japanese domestic market, where households used them to record broadcast television. Sony had already stopped manufacturing the devices and recordable discs about a year ago, and the final shipments are clearing out remaining inventory.

Kyodo attributes the segment's death to the rise of streaming services. Sony will continue selling Blu-ray players "for the time being." The broader Blu-ray ecosystem remains intact. Asus, LG, and Pioneer still produce PC drives in internal and external USB form factors. Panasonic and Verbatim continue manufacturing Blu-ray media. The format turned 20 last year, having debuted at CES 2006 -- one year before Netflix launched its streaming platform.

Sony announced last month that it plans to pass control of its home entertainment division -- including the two-decade-old Bravia television brand -- to Chinese electronics group TCL through a joint venture in which TCL would hold a 51% stake. The Japanese company was long ago overtaken in sales by South Korea's Samsung and LG and now holds just 2% of the global television market. Sony stopped making its own LCD screens in 2011.

Chinese companies supplied 71% of television panels made in Asia last year, according to TCL, and less than 10% are now produced in Japan and Korea. TCL is close to overtaking Samsung as the world's largest television maker. Sony retains valuable intellectual property in image rendering, and the Bravia brand still carries consumer recognition, but its OLED screens are already supplied by Samsung and LG. The company has been shifting toward premium cameras, professional audio, and its entertainment businesses in film, music, and games -- areas where intellectual property is less exposed to Chinese manufacturing scale.

The original Switch is officially Nintendo's best-selling console of all time after surpassing the DS handheld in lifetime sales. From a report: In its latest earnings release, Nintendo reports that the Nintendo Switch has, as of December 31, 2025, sold 155.37 million units since its launch in 2017, compared to 154.02 million units for the 2004 Nintendo DS.

In November, Nintendo reported that the Switch and DS were neck and neck. We expected the holiday sales period would see the Switch surpass the DS, even with Nintendo announcing that primary development would focus on the Switch 2. Nintendo previously said that it would continue to sell the original Switch "while taking consumer demand and the business environment into consideration."

Nintendo has to keep selling the Switch if it wants to dethrone Sony's PlayStation 2 as the best-selling video game console of all time. The PlayStation 2, discontinued in January 2013, sold more than 160 million units over its 13-year lifespan.

"Technology companies spent part of the 2010s trying to convince us that we would want an 8K display one day..." writes Ars Technica.

"However, 8K never proved its necessity or practicality." LG Display is no longer making 8K LCD or OLED panels, FlatpanelsHD reported today... LG Electronics was the first and only company to sell 8K OLED TVs, starting with the 88-inch Z9 in 2019. In 2022, it lowered the price-of-entry for an 8K OLED TV by $7,000 by charging $13,000 for a 76.7-inch TV. FlatpanelsHD cited anonymous sources who said that LG Electronics would no longer restock the 2024 QNED99T, which is the last LCD 8K TV that it released.

LG's 8K abandonment follows other brands distancing themselves from 8K. TCL, which released its last 8K TV in 2021, said in 2023 that it wasn't making more 8K TVs due to low demand. Sony discontinued its last 8K TVs in April and is unlikely to return to the market, as it plans to sell the majority ownership of its Bravia TVs to TCL.

The tech industry tried to convince people that the 8K living room was coming soon. But since the 2010s, people have mostly adopted 4K. In September 2024, research firm Omdia reported that there were "nearly 1 billion 4K TVs currently in use." In comparison, 1.6 million 8K TVs had been sold since 2015, Paul Gray, Omdia's TV and video technology analyst, said, noting that 8K TV sales peaked in 2022. That helps explain why membership at the 8K Association, launched by stakeholders Samsung, TCL, Hisense, and panel maker AU Optronics in 2019, is dwindling. As of this writing, the group's membership page lists 16 companies, including just two TV manufacturers (Samsung and Panasonic). Membership no longer includes any major TV panel suppliers. At the end of 2022, the 8K Association had 33 members, per an archived version of the nonprofit's online membership page via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine.
"It wasn't hard to predict that 8K TVs wouldn't take off," the article concludes. "In addition to being too expensive for many households, there's been virtually zero native 8K content available to make investing in an 8K display worthwhile..."