A recently published patent application from tech behemoth Sony, the maker of PlayStation, detailed the concept of “super-fungible tokens” for games, which would be stored on a distributed ledger and transferable from player to player.
Many gamers have had experiences where they get really into a video game, spend a bunch of money on in-game skins or battle passes, and eventually get tired of the game. When this happens in traditional “Web2” games, players are forced to accept the money spent on in-game assets as a sunk cost, and move on. You typically can't sell those assets.
But blockchain gaming changes all of that, and the recent patent application—filed in 2022 but just published to the public last week—from Sony about super-fungible tokens hints that the tech giant might want to get in on the shift.
The patent application outlines a process of tracking a set of gaming assets associated with a player on an “electronic device” and generating metadata based on those assets. The metadata would then be used to create a super-fungible token—essentially a bundle of various NFTs—where the token is created by the storage of said metadata on a distributed ledger that is “associated with the gaming application.”
The application implies that Sony is considering allowing NFTs in its games. While the patent does include the term “distributed ledger,” aka a blockchain, it does not specify whether or not it would be a private or public ledger. Sony does specify that the distributed ledger in question would be “associated with the gaming application,” which suggests that Sony may plan to launch its own chain for such an endeavor.
Either way, whether or not Sony launches NFTs on a public blockchain like Ethereum or Solana, or on a private chain of its own making, NFT adoption from such a big player in the gaming industry would be a huge leap forward for blockchain enthusiasts.
In practice, super-fungible tokens are essentially a bundle of unique in-game assets—such as skins, weapons, vehicles, etc. that are tokenized as NFTs—that can be used within video games. If Sony were to pursue using this patent, it would mean that one of the largest gaming companies in the world is potentially interested in allowing players to own their own in-game assets.
“Potentially,” because at the end of the day, it’s up to Sony how much financialization it allows. If Sony chooses to pursue this framework on a private chain that it controls, then the gaming giant could impose all sorts of restrictions—but there’s no indication yet that Sony actually plans to roll out this functionality any time soon, if ever.
Decrypt's GG reached out to PlayStation for comment but did not immediately hear back.
This isn’t the first time Sony has filed a patent related to using NFTs in PlayStation games. Sony’s previous patent application focused on giving players the ability to own and transfer in-game assets from one game to another.
However, in the same filing, Sony claimed that the gaming consoles available today are “technologically inadequate for the owner to use the asset across different games and/or platforms.” That implies that there’s still some time to go until we have consoles that have the hardware necessary to handle an open NFT ecosystem.
Edited by Andrew Hayward