Sony PlayStation explores the use of in-game NFTs and blockchain technology

Sony PlayStation has filed a patent that uses blockchain technology and NFTs to track in-game assets. The digital assets could be items or characters and digital media assets, such as video clips or images.

The patent, titled “Tracking Unique In-Game Digital Assets Using Tokens on a Distributed Ledger,” was published on November 10 in the U.S. However, Sony’s patent doesn’t mean that NFTs will be integrated into PlayStation’s games. Over the years, the company has filed multiple patents for ideas that didn’t quite work out.

According to the document filed in the name of Sony Interactive Entertainment Inc., the company is looking at ways to create, modify, and transfer tokens created within a game or developed on a game’s system through a distributed ledger. The abstract outlines how the patent works:

“The digital asset is created, and a distributed ledger tracking a history of the digital asset is created and stored across devices. A unique token for the digital asset can include a unique identifier and metadata identifying properties of the digital asset. Changes to properties of the digital asset, such as ownership, visual appearance, or metadata, can be identified in a request to update the history. A new block can be generated for, and appended to, the distributed ledger identifying the changes to the history of the digital asset. The new block can include hashes of previous blocks.”

In the summer, the company introduced PlayStation Stars, a loyalty-reward program that rewards users with PlayStation-themed digital collectibles that aren’t built with NFT technology. PlayStation distanced itself from NFTs, which have a mixed reputation in the gaming world.

Sony has previously spoken on metaverse. The company’s CEO, Kenichiro Yoshida, sees the metaverse as a “social space and live network space where games, music, movies, and anime intersect.”

Square Enix, Ubisoft, Sega, and Konami are among other gaming companies that have implemented NFTs in their projects or plan to do so.