Sony Is Selling Real-Life Loot Boxes At Comic-Con
It's not uncommon to see the real world imitating art at Comic-Con, where countless attendees cosplay as their favorite characters from movies, television shows, and comic books. Some are taking issue, however, with Sony's PlayStation brand bringing loot boxes into the land of the living.
Reddit users have been sharing photos of Sony's PlayStation Gear booth at San Diego Comic-Con, which is reportedly selling loot boxes full of random PlayStation merchandise. For $60 a pop, you can pick up a box yourself and gamble on the contents you might find within. Another Reddit user shared what lucky buyers could find in yesterday's box, which Sony claims had around $90 worth of PlayStation merchandise, and... well, it wasn't all that special.
One PlayStation pin. One lanyard. One pair of PlayStation-branded socks. One sheet of decals for PlayStation controllers. And one DualShock controller stand. Even at the most inflated prices, you might have trouble convincing someone that all of that is worth $90, let alone $60. But that's what those who rolled the dice yesterday got in the PlayStation take on these loot boxes, which seem to be showing up quite a bit at various conventions around the country.
The idea behind them isn't all that new. These are more akin to the subscription boxes you might find online than, say, the loot boxes you can obtain in a video game, which contain items that are of little to no value outside of the game itself. But the existence of video game loot boxes might have helped these random grab bags of merch become more widely accepted. Heck, a company that offers such boxes for gaming collectibles and other nerdy types of gear actually calls itself Loot Crate. And as fate would have it, that website is actually pushing a sale right at this moment themed around San Diego Comic-Con.
Sony's current plan, according to a blog post from Tuesday, is to sell one unique loot box each day, and then sell whatever boxes remain at the close of Comic-Con. It'll be interesting to see if the company has enough takers to sell out on a daily basis, or if Sony will be forced to liquidate its loot box stash at the end of the event.
Judging by yesterday's goods, the boxes don't seem quite worth the $60 asking price. Some PlayStation die-hards, however, might just buy them up anyway.