Sony announced today that it's catching up to 2021's hottest trend, by launching its own blockchain which will be able to support NFTs, and play-to-earn games.
While Sony's blockchain announcement is not exclusively aimed at gaming, a segment of the announcement mentions what they are looking at in the gaming region potentially with their new Soneium blockchain.
End users will be able to access Soneium through applications that are compatible with Soneium's network, and will be able to interact with Web3 games and NFT marketplaces provided by each app, as well as entertainment-related services.
Sony is launching its own support for NFTs with the Soneium blockchain that they announced. NFTs have been unpopular with gamers since about two seconds after they were revealed, and Sony launching this in 2024 shows how the company is sometimes slow to adapt to trends, as it is now years after other companies have entered, and exited the field of NFTs. Sony's Jun Watanabe, the head of their 'advanced business search department' and chairman of Sony Block Solutions, shared the following thoughts on the matter:
I think the development of a comprehensive Web3 solution based on blockchain is very significant to the Sony Group, which has developed a wide variety of businesses under its purpose of "Fill the world with emotion, through the power of creativity and technology." We will work to create diverse businesses and new use cases with the aim of delivering customer value that can only be enjoyed through Web3 technology to as many users as possible and making people's lives richer and more colorful.
It is worth noting that this doesn't mean that Sony is necessarily planning to make play-to-earn games itself, or implementing NFTs in its upcoming games, but it definitely opens the door to it. It also opens the path to play-to-earn games being on PlayStation for other developers, while Sony still collects its tithe as platform, and presumably now blockchain, czar.
What is the history of NFTs in Gaming?
There's been a lot of noise about gaming and NFTs over the past few years. During that time we have seen Ubisoft experiment with NFTs lightly in Ghost Recon Wildlands, as well as other companies dabble in the space (like Stalker developer GSC World), before meeting backlash and often retreating from it (though Square Enix continues in the space as well). Reasons for dislike of NFTs vary among gamers but they can be briefly summed up in a few points:
- They are ecologically damaging,
- Rampant speculation drives the entire market,
- They don't actually do anything, being essentially JPGs (It's worse, it's links to JPEGs),
- There's an abundance of scammers and grifters in the market (See: Web3 is going great).
Regardless of the individual reason, players pushed back against NFTs a lot. While mention of interoperability of NFTs was mentioned a lot by those pitching them, it's either not feasible as developer Rami Ismail explained, or you can do it perfectly fine without them. The easiest way to view most NFTs is that imagine its a blockchain version of the Steam Marketplace, as they are like Team Fortress 2 Hats and Counter-Strike 2 skins with all the issues those markets have dialed up to 11, and massive amounts of power usage.
There is one other sector of games though in NFTs that got a lot of attention - play to earn. These games were all about earning NFTs, and you could sell them to make money (or crypto currency to be more exact). To return to our Steam Marketplace analogy, these are the Banana game and similar titles that exist just to create inventory items that spark speculative bubbles and are full of bots. The most famous of these was Axie Infinity, which garnered attention for Philippines and other lower-wage countries having people earn money playing the game to get resources for others who paid them… before it all came screeching to a halt even before the game suffered a massive hack.
The issues with the sector have led to actions being taken like Valve banning them on Steam, and Minecraft banning NFTs as well. Developers like Bungie's Max Nicols, and organizations like the IGDA have spoken out against them as well.
As for what more Sony will do with the blockchain, and NFTs we'll have to just wait and see.
