A new trademark and logo have emerged from SEGA for “SEGA NFT”, which is assumably intended as their NFT Marketplace which they have stated they intended to explore. SEGA had first shared their interest in exploring the NFT space last April when they announced that they had partnered with Double Jump Tokyo to begin selling visual art, in-game images, and background music based on their classic IPs as NFTs. They then repeated this to investors later in November, similarly enthusiastic about the prospects.
SEGA has however adopted a less excitable stance about the prospect since then, due in part to consumer backlash towards NFTs. These concerns have ranged from consumers simply not liking NFT marketplaces mixed into their gaming experiences, to environmental concerns brought about by the energy consumption that using the Blockchain requires. Sega CEO Haruki Satomi acknowledged the consumer backlash, though stated the company was still eager to explore the space:
We need to carefully assess many things such as how we can mitigate the negative elements, how much we can introduce this within the Japanese regulation, what will be accepted and what will not be by the users. Then, we will consider this further if this leads to our mission ‘Constantly Creating, Forever Captivating’, but if it is perceived as simple money-making, I would like to make a decision not to proceed.
Despite this tempered trepidation, SEGA still seems to be laying down the groundwork needed to launch its NFT platform this year, as evidenced by this new filing, which was published today by the Japan Patent Office. The filing, which was made in December of last year, covered two different NFT brands for SEGA. One of these was simply SEGA NFT, while the other was SEGA Classics NFT Collection, which will assumably deal with older games.
SEGA is far from the only company exploring NFTs. Ubisoft launched Quartz, which is their own NFT platform, and Square Enix has recently expressed its own interest in getting into NFTs. Popular voice actor Troy Baker also announced that he will be partnering with NFT company Voiceverse.
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