Sony Wants You To Rent Its NFTs

The video game industry has had a rough history with NFTs. Video game studios and publishers have explored the idea of in-game NFTs with curiosity, only to be rejected by consumers.

Video game NFT projects were met with hostility from gamers, which forced companies to cancel their NFT projects and scale back the idea altogether. 

Essentially, NFTs are digital art that is held on the blockchain, where ownership of the piece is recorded. You can save an image of an NFT, but you cannot copy that ‘ownership’ on a digital ledger. This is what gave NFTs their intrinsic value.

NFTs were hip in the last two years, but crashing crypto prices brought the NFT market to its knees. Still, some companies, including Sony, are looking at ways to further integrate crypto and NFTs into their ecosystem. 

According to a patent found by Game Rant, Sony is further exploring ways to integrate NFTs into Playstation. Sony wants to rent out its NFTs to players. Players would be allowed to have ownership of an NFT of an in-game character for possibly a limited time. The system for the patent is below. 

These NFTs could be sold back onto the market once a rental period is over, or the NFT could be rented to other players. According to Gamerant, the patent was filed in July of last year.

It seems odd that Sony is continuing to pursue NFTs despite their bad reputation with gamers. Video game studios have faced hostility over their existence in gaming, but it is a different situation when the owner of an entire gaming ecosystem considers their implementation. 

Sony is not alone in building an NFT marketplace. Gamestop and Ubisoft have built out their own gaming NFT marketplace, and other publishers, such as Square Enix, are also exploring integrating NFTs into their ecosystems.

Some argue that NFTs are a good replacement for traditional cosmetic and microtransaction items within games. Others say it’s unnecessary monetization and an attempt to turn a hobby into a job.

Proponents of NFTs refer to NFT video games as “play to earn,” as you could earn money just from playing a game and earning NFTs (for reference, Ubisoft requires you to play 600 hours to earn a single NFT).

Whenever Sony announces their NFT ecosystem, expect it to be met with harsh criticism, as did the many NFT video game projects that came before them did.