Fresh from resurrecting Suikoden 1 and 2 (opens in new tab) (and gaining some public goodwill in the process), Konami saw fit to remind us that, yes, it is still the company that made over $150,000 from the sale of the Castlevania NFT (opens in new tab) back in January. A press release (opens in new tab) The company's website states that Konami is looking for people who can help it build the systems and services needed to "deliver new experiences like WEB3 and Metaverse."
Konami has been hard at work “conducting research and development to incorporate the latest technology into games and content,” the release says, and plans to launch a service where “players can trade their NFTs (digital items) in-game through a unique distribution platform using blockchain.”
In other words, Konami wants to build its own NFT trading platform. The company says the NFTs players will be trading (or it hopes will be) “can be used in-game as items,” to “interact with other services and communities,” and to “participate in fan communities and events.”
The first promise is pretty clear: players will be able to trade in-game gear on Konami’s platform, but the next two are a bit confusing. I think the second is another way of saying you’ll be trading with other Konami fans, not just fans of whatever game you like, and the third could refer to an NFT-based event ticketing system? We’ll have to wait, breathlessly, to find out.
It’s not exactly an auspicious time to jump on the NFT train: Last month, it was reported that NFT transactions on OpenSea — the most popular online marketplace for non-fungible trinkets —90% fell (opens in new tab) since the beginning of the year. This in addition to a wider cryptographic flaw (opens in new tab) which occurred in the middle of this year.
But cryptocurrency is a volatile market at the best of times, and it may be that Konami is simply waiting for it to recover. as it was done before (opens in new tab). Or, perhaps the company has built up enough momentum around its “WEB3 and Metaverse” projects that there’s no stopping them at this point. Either way, who cares to bet on which one we’ll see first: Metal Gear remasters? (opens in new tab)or Metal Gear NFTs?
