PlayStation dives into NFT World with new patent, rival XBOX lags behind

A recently published patent suggests that the gaming giant Sony PlayStation can use non-fungible tokens (NFT) in the game – or at least they are looking at it. Microsoft‘s XBOXmeanwhile, seems to be looking in the opposite direction.

Sony’s patent is titled “US20220358450 – Tracking Unique In-Game Digital Assets Using Tokens on a Distributed Ledger”. Notably, the original application date was actually May 7, 2021. However, the publication date is November 10 this year.

The abstract describes “a system and method for tracking digital assets associated with video games,” and states:

“The digital assets may be in-game digital assets, such as in-game items or characters [and/or] video game digital media assets that represent moments of playing a video game, such as video clips or images.”

It goes on to describe the use of NFTs in games, specifically creating in-game assets as well as making changes to them, including appearance and ownership.

“Aspects of the current technology include systems and methods for creating, modifying, tracking, authenticating and/or transferring unique digital assets associated with a video game,” the description reads.

The document stated that some games allow the use of digital assets during gameplay, but that these are traditionally fungible and cannot be separated from each other – no matter how rare, and explains:

“Therefore, in traditional video games, no digital asset is unique from other instances of the same item in the game. As a result, in traditional video games, there is no way to know, track, or authenticate a history of a particular instance of an item in the game . For example, in traditional video games, there is no way to distinguish a specific instance of an in-game item that a famous player of the video game used to win a famous tournament from any other instance of the in-game item.”

It notes that video games are extremely popular worldwide and refers to e-sports, saying that some of the players can develop large followings, just as popular athletes and other celebrities do.

However, this is not Sony’s first foray into the NFT space. For example, in May this year, South Korea’s blockchain network operator Theta Labs revealed that their new 3D NFTs were designed to be used with Sony’s Spatial Reality Display, a display device that has a high-speed vision sensor, which tracks users’ eye movements to create 3D based on eye positions.

Others make movements in the room as well. For example, Japanese entertainment conglomerate Square Enix announced in July that they were partnering with the NFT platform Engine (ENJ) to launch its digital collection of cards celebrating the 25th anniversary of Final Fantasy VII.

NFTs are “hammer looking for a nail”

Microsoft is often mentioned in relation to the metaverse these days, but not so much to NFTs. Rather, it seems it wants to stay away from them as far as possible, at least for now.

Speaking to Bloomberg in late August, gaming CEO Phil Spencer said that

– We made some comments Minecraft about how we view NFTs in this space because we saw people doing things that we thought were exploitative in our product. And we said we don’t want that. I think sometimes it’s a hammer looking for a nail when these technologies come up. But the actual human use or player use in our case of these technologies – I think there could be some interesting things.”

As reported, in July this year, the popular sandbox video game Minecraftowned by Microsoft, banned NFTs and blockchain innovations from integrating with the platform.

But when it comes to the metaverse, Theo Tzanidis and Matthew Frew from University of the West of Scotland claimed back in February that “Microsoft positioned itself as one of the pioneers of the metaverse even before its $75 billion deal to buy the online gaming giant Activision Blizzard.”

And in the Bloomberg interview, Spencer stated that in his view, “gamers have been in the metaverse for 30 years.”

But when it comes to play-to-earn and crypto aspects of gaming, he claimed that

“Play-to-earn is something I am cautious about. It creates a workforce out of players for individual players to make money off of.”

However, he noted that this has existed in the gaming industry for a long time, but said that now it is starting to be built into the economy of the game itself.

Meanwhile, as reported, Microsoft, Sony, Meta, Nvidia, as well as 33 other tech giants fighting to build the metaverse, formed a group to create the infrastructure for an interoperable metaverse in June of this year. Dubbed Metaverse Standards ForumThe new initiative aims to introduce interoperability and cross-compatibility in the space to promote the development of the “open metaverse.”

You can watch the interview with Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer here:

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