Sony is looking to create another big character brand, and Astro Bot could be replaced. Sony Creative Products is working on original characters with the goal of building a business that could eventually compete with companies like Sanrio, the company behind Hello Kitty. One of its main characters right now is Nemu the Night Owl Bear, he’s a character who worries so much about problems in the world that he can’t sleep. Nemu already has more than 1 million followers, and Sony wants its character business to reach around ¥10 billion, or more than $60 million, in annual sales by 2030.

PS5 emulation has hit another impressive milestone. A Discord user named RSantila reportedly booted Astro Bot on a Windows PC using SharpEmu, an experimental PS5 emulator. This is huge since Astro Bot is a 2024 PS5 exclusive and shows how quickly PS5 emulation is advancing. One interesting detail is that Claude is listed as a contributor to the SharpEmu project on GitHub because people are using it to advance even faster. Apparently the community is contributing more after Sony’s recent announcement about ending physical game distribution in some markets. Don’t expect to play PS5 games on PC anytime soon, though. Booting a game is just the first step.