Konami is selling NFTs to celebrate Castlevania's 35th anniversary

[Shawn Knight]

In brief: A total of 14 items will be up for grabs including game scenes, background music and newly drawn artwork. Konami said there will only be one copy of each item available meaning there will be at least some sort of appeal in terms of rarity.

NFTs were a hot commodity in 2021. Heading into December, consumers had spent nearly $27 billion on the ownership of virtual goods and there’s no reason to believe the momentum slowed over the holidays.

Some might assume there is a clear correlation between NFTs and gamers, but data up to this point does little to validate that assumption. In fact, the opposite seems true, which makes it a bit perplexing that gaming companies like Konami keep pressing the issue.

Yet here we are with Konami preparing to auction off a handful of Castlevania NFTs to celebrate the 35th anniversary of the franchise.

The gaming company is working with OpenSea on the auction, a leading online marketplace for virtual collectibles. The auction page is already live although bidding doesn’t start until January 12.

Those who purchase an NFT will also have the opportunity to have their name listed on Konami’s website through at least the end of the year.

As this isn't an in-game NFT offering like we've seen from other game developers, it's difficult to predict with any certainty how things might go.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/92886-konami-selling-nfts-celebrate-castlevania-35th-anniversary.html

 

[Alexmx]

Gaming companies continue to express interest in more money.

There, I fixed it

 

[winjer]

Of course Konami would have to try to scam consumers with NFTs.

 

[Dimitriid]

I propose that we celebrate the series by buying Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night instead, possibly while tagging Konami executives using various colorful expletives.

 

[Geralt]

When I watch those crappy NFTs I have a strong desire to go to the bathroom.

 

[arrowflash]

I recently read a lot about NFTs and they're even worse than I thought.

I thought you'd own an immutable copy of the media that's stored in the blockchain, but it's not even that. In most cases what people own is just a link. There might be a few valid use cases for NFTs, but definitely not speculating on .jpgs which is peak tulip mania, and any company jumping on this fad is destroying any credibility I could have on them.

 

[ScottSoapbox]

An NFT is just trading money for bragging rights.

Bragging rights that you bought a useless thing loosely tied to something you love.

Companies have been doing this for years with posters, action figures, etc.

Influencers do it for shout outs and graphics to show up on a stream.

This is not new.

 

[Dimitriid]

I recently read a lot about NFTs and they're even worse than I thought.

I thought you'd own an immutable copy of the media that's stored in the blockchain, but it's not even that. In most cases what people own is just a link. There might be a few valid use cases for NFTs, but definitely not speculating on .jpgs which is peak tulip mania, and any company jumping on this fad is destroying any credibility I could have on them.

jpegs are probably the worst case scenario: both because of how transparently awful they are and how little goes into asserting ownership at all.

There's certain things that could have DRM involved in the process which is where games come in. But still almost all in-game items or collectibles could have a rarity but will not be 'unique' and the DRM is only something people can claim lets them have ownership for as long as the game itself or rather, it's online component, it's online and we know it's notoriously bad for most games being intentionally deprecated to make room for sequels.

And yes I seriously doubt that the game companies selling NFTs will actually take some of those profits into maintaining the servers for a lot longer to them they basically see them as the ultimate excuse for 'it's just cosmetic items!' and were assuming most gamers were foolish enough to figuratively and literally buy into them.

End of the day this is basically just another stupid tech buzzword that executives love to use as a clutch to appear important and forward-looking when they know nothing about how it works: "Clout native", "metaverse", "fintech", "edge computing" etc. These are not concepts they thought about: these are words they saw on popular financial articles, brought to a meeting and ordered the long-suffering middle management and staff to implement and PR to announce.

 

[Puiu]

Konami stopped making games a long time ago.

 

[stewi0001]

An NFT is just trading money for bragging rights.

Bragging rights that you bought a useless thing loosely tied to something you love.

Companies have been doing this for years with posters, action figures, etc.

Influencers do it for shout outs and graphics to show up on a stream.

This is not new.

Posters and action figures are tangible at least.

 

[VEGGIM]

Konami stopped making games a long time ago.

DDR exists

 

[Puiu]

DDR exists

the last DDR game they made was an abomination and they only released a port recently which was surrounded by "rip off" type of scandals. tl;dr Konami is done as a game developer for PC and consoles. just a company with the reputation in the negative which nobody wants to buy games from. f konami