[penis111]

Honestly, I don't think it matters. I agree with the basic points the article makes as being more salient.. After all, despite the complexities, there are successful hardware businesses.

These robots (I have a Cozmo and a Jibo) are at their core a novelty robot or "thing" attached to a voice assistant. Voice assistant are not "social" except to the autistic and those that have spent too much time reading about socializing in the academic literature rather than actually interacting with humans not in a study.

So they can't be social, and the robot part at the end of the day is basically a toy whose whiz-bang wears off rather quickly. I find a lot of the research on emotional connections to be a bit self-serving. There are some people that end up attached to a weird head thing, but most require something a bit smarter, it does not make a sizeable market.

Anyone in the toy industry could have looked at their financials and known this was a shitty idea, because at the end of the day none of these products have demonstrated that they are more than a toy attached to a voice assistant. Blaming retail channel cuts is a bit rich.