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The partnership of Tamagotchi and Amazon Web Services is so interesting, and we love hearing more about it. Yuri Okamoto of the Bandai planning team of the Toy Division Global Toy Planning Department, who was in charge of the planning and development of the Tamagotchi Uni at Bandai, and Daisuke Sakammoto of the technical design team of the same department explain further why exactly Bandai adopted AWS for the new Tamagotchi Uni.

Mr. Okamoto explains that the first connectivity method was introduced in 1997 with the Tamagotchi Osutchi and Mesutchi. The purpose of this connectivity was for one character to be able to cross over into the other device.

Then in March of 2004, after the explosive boom of Tamagotchi calmed down, the Tamagotchi Plus model was introduced with new infrared communication. The infrared technology functionality was the exact function that was tailored in the heyday of feature phones in Japan, and it was possible not only to connect two Tamagotchi’s together, but also to mobile phones.

Newer models also introduced different types of connectivity, including NFC with the Tamagotchi 4U in 2014. NFC was aimed to allow Tamagotchi’s to connect together by touching the devices together. However, the communication speed of NFC was not very fast, so it did not become a user experience the communication would end when touched.

Tamagotchi M!X back in 2016 brought back the infrared connectivity. The Tamagotchi Meets back in 2018 then introduced Bluetooth connectivity on top of the infrared functionality which enable the ability to connect to a smartphone or tablet to use the application.

The Tamagotchi Smart which was released in the midst of the COVID-19 global pandemic where contact with people was suppressed. The Tamagotchi Smart allowed caretakers to interact with their Tamagotchi with the use of voice and touch, along with wearing your Tamagotchi Smart right on your wrist.

Mr. Okamoto then discusses how the Tamagotchi demand has been higher overseas than in Japan. The Tamagotchi Uni was sought out to unify the design and content of play sot hat Tamagotchi users around the world can enjoy the same Tamagotchi Uni globally.

The Tamagotchi Uni also introduced Wi-Fi for the first time. This enables the new Tamaverse feature, software updates, and more. There are a wide range of functions that should be independently implemented in the cloud infrastructure to realize the concept of the Tamagotchi Uni. AWS has great infrastructure capabilities and a range of sample documents to advance development.

By now we all know that Bandai partnered with Amazon Web Services (AWS) when creating the Tamagotchi Uni. This fuels many features from over the air software updates, and more. In a recent interview with Yuri Okamoto (left) and Daisuke Sakamoto (right), they explain why Tamagotchi Uni uses AWS, and not other platforms such as Azure or Oracle.

According to Mr. Sakamoto, there are two main reasons for adopting AWS as a cloud platform that realizes a series of functions. The first is that AWS provided FreeRTOS, which was decided to be adopted as the OS of the Tamagotchi Uni. FreeRTOS is a real-time operating system kernel for embedded devices. This provides ease of cooperation with the cloud, especially AWS.

The goal for Tamagotchi Uni was to be able to get Tamagotchi users excited all over the world, which was critical during the planning stage.

Second, AWS provided the security Bandai was looking for. This included device authentication. "When it comes to releasing it all over the world and distributing content on the same model, technically, in addition to device authentication, security that children are not exposed to malicious intent is important. Based on that, we compared and examined the IoT services of each company, and as a result, we contacted the AWS inquiry window," said Sakamoto.

"Tamagotchi has released a different series in Japan and overseas, and recently the ones for Europe and the United States have become popular. I think that the global visibility has also increased, and I wanted to provide content where Tamagotchi users from all over the world can get excited together here." (Mr. Okamoto).

Using AWS Bandai is also able to collect data on how children play with Tamagotchi. They do not collect personal information but they are able to measure which items are polar, and Bandai will make sure of that information in the future for content production.

"As a feature of products equipped with Wi-Fi and connected to the cloud, we can now see information such as how much it is played. I want to connect such information to the improvement of future play." (Mr. Sakamoto)