By Evan Ackerman
On my tour of the Sony booth (I like how they call these places “booths,” but they’re bigger than my house), I was given a little demo of Sony’s Rolly MP3 player. Rolly is… Well… I’m not sure what it is. It plays music and dances and looks like an egg. It’s not good for much, but I really really like it. Don’t ask me why. The controls are intuitive (neat gyroscopic sensitivity), and its dance moves are automatically synced up with the music it plays quite well. It’s programmable, so that you can choreograph your own sequences, and in Japan (where the Rolly has been on sale since September) there are competitive Rolly dance-offs. Rolly can hold a gig of music, or it can stream music from another source via integrated Bluetooth. Battery life is good for about four hours of song and dance.
Rolly should go on sale this spring in Sony Style stores, for an undisclosed price. If you’re guessing that it’s weird enough to be either super cheap or super expensive, you’re right: the price in Japan is, sadly, $350.
[ Sony Style ]
