Sony Rewards PlayStation Loyalty as Apple Loses Ive

It’s the weekend again, which means it’s time for us to reveal our winner and loser of the last seven days.
Amazon stole a good chunk of our attention this week with its annual Prime Day sale, signaling savings on some of our favorite tech. The other major novelty of the week is the launch of the Nothing Phone (1), the first smartphone from the new Nothing brand from OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei.
Read on to find out who we named our winner and loser this week…

Winner: Sony
This week, Sony announced PlayStation Stars, a loyalty program that will reward gamers for picking up their DualSense controllers and diving into their favorite titles.
The free program will invite players to earn rewards by completing a number of campaigns and activities.
The “Monthly Check-In” campaign will give you the opportunity to earn a reward by playing any game of your choice. Other campaigns involve more specific challenges, such as battling in tournaments, winning specific trophies, or being the first to claim a title in your local time zone.
Loyalty points can be redeemed in a catalog that includes PSN wallet funds and select Playstation Store products. To add to that, the purchases you make on the Playstation Store will automatically convert into points, allowing you to count them to redeem for more products.
Besides points, Sony will also be offering PlayStation Stars rewards in the form of digital collectibles. These will include digital figurines of game characters and “valuable devices that tap into Sony’s history of innovation.”
As with any loyalty program, PlayStation Stars is clearly about rewarding consumers who engage with its products. While we can’t see it enticing Xbox loyalists to trade in their Series X for a PS5, it’s an interesting idea that could give PlayStation gamers extra incentive to fire up their consoles and revisit their favorite titles as they are sheltering from the sun this summer.

Loser: Apple
This week’s loser is Apple after it was announced that the company would finally part ways with Jony Ive.
If you’re having deja vu reading the sentence above, it might be because this isn’t the first time Apple has cut ties with Ive. Designer Ive officially stepped down from his senior role at the company in 2019, but continued to work with Apple from the freedom of his own company, LoveFrom, for the years that followed.
However, the multi-year deal between the two could be coming to an end, according to The New York Times.
According to the report, some Apple executives had questioned the amount of money Ive was receiving as part of the deal, while others noted the number of Apple employees transferred to the company from ‘Ive.
So why is this potentially bad news for Apple?
Ive has been involved in Apple’s aesthetic decisions since the 90s and is credited with designing a wide range of iconic devices, from the translucent iMac to the iPod, iPhone and Apple Watch. He even helped envision the company’s Apple Park headquarters.
If Apple and Ive finally go their separate ways, we’ll have to wait and see if Apple continues to emulate Ive’s designs or embarks on a new path – for better or for worse.