In a recent interview, Sega has said that it believes that NFTs and cloud gaming are a “natural extension” of the future of gaming.
This week’s example of a gaming company being wrong about NFTs is Sega, courtesy of an interview with executive VP Shuji Utsumi translated by VGC. The listing is featured on Sega Japan’s recruitment website, where Utsumi discusses some of the plans Sega has, including the ‘SuperGame’ it has in development. This SuperGame will apparently be multiple “AAA titles that cross over Sega’s comprehensive range of technologies,” that the company aims to achieve within five years.
Utsumi goes on to talk about how numerous titles are “being developed within the framework of SuperGame,” before proceeding to talk about something to do with people being or not being gamers. But most annoyingly, the interview went on to talk about NFTs. Sega producer Masayoshi Kikuchi noted that “gaming has a history of expansion through the connection of various cultures and technologies. For example, social networking and game video viewing are recent examples.”
These recent examples are apparently cloud gaming and NFTs, with Kikuchi going on to say “It is a natural extension for the future of gaming that it will expand to involve new areas such as cloud gaming and NFT.” Have whatever opinion you like on cloud gaming, but on the NFT front Kikuchi is flat out wrong, because NFTs add literally nothing to games other than greater energy usage and a fancy receipt.
Why Sega is joining the list of companies like Ubisoft and Square Enix that insist in engaging in NFTs, we’ll never know (this is a lie, it’s money). But it is strange that the company is progressing with exploring NFTs, when Sega CEO Haruki Satomi said earlier this year that it wouldn’t go ahead with them “if it is perceived as simple money-making,” which it absolutely is.
But whatever these SuperGames turn out to be, we can likely expect NFTs to be tied on somehow.
