I sit up for the day when my mind doesn’t have to consider phrases like “distributed ledger,” “fungible,” or “jtoken” anymore. But when latest Sony patents are something to go by, we will not be out of the NFT woods but (if there are nonetheless woods left when crypto burns the planet down). Whereas the broader world of crypto is crashing just like the Hindenburg, Sony remains to be eyeing video-game-focused NFT know-how for in-game collectibles. Thrilling.
Noticed by Video Video games Chronicle and Gamesual yesterday, a Sony patent from final 12 months, although revealed just lately, charts out the corporate’s curiosity in know-how that might “[convert] the digital property related to video video games from being fungible to being non-fungible” and in programs that might “create and handle such digital property, by monitoring a historical past of the digital property.” The patent identifies these digital property as “in-game objects or characters” or “online game digital media property representing moments of gameplay of a online game, akin to video clips or photographs.” One other time period for that’s bullshi—NFTs.
These ideas aren’t new. Sony’s patent sounds very similar to what different leisure corporations, together with online game corporations, have been attempting to make work ever since we have been cursed with realizing what the hell an NFT even is (please, please don’t e mail me reiterating what they’re and why I simply don’t perceive it, man).
The patent references baseball collectibles (a standard sufficient analogy for NFTs and distinctive digital collectibles) as proof that individuals like to gather memorable objects, after which speculates that there’s a want for digital property to emulate the shortage of bodily assets like “baseballs autographed by [Babe] Ruth, baseballs hit by Ruth in an essential baseball recreation, buying and selling playing cards depicting Ruth, and the like.”
Although it doesn’t identify any widespread streamers or professional avid gamers, the patent speculates that such celebrities might have their very own variations of a Babe Ruth-struck baseball through NFT know-how. Proper now the dearth of shortage in digital worlds means there may be at the moment “no solution to know, observe, or authenticate a historical past of a specific occasion of an in-game merchandise.” This patent speculates a means of fixing that inherent nature of digital “items.”
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So, y’know, in Sony’s future you possibly can lay our a fortune on a pores and skin Ninja used on a gun in a event. Isn’t the long run superb? If solely Sony had some type of program of cataloging and distributing digital rewards and collectibles. Oh, wait.
If this all appears like an answer searching for an issue, effectively, that’s as a result of it’s.