Some time ago, the creation of Oasys , a shared blockchain among major Japanese video game developers, was announced to support their games on the blockchain. Sega was one of the companies that had developed the blockchain in question and had allowed the creation of some NFTs by licensing its less popular titles, but its interest seems to have waned over time.
In a recent interview with Bloomberg, Sega's COO said they are abandoning most of their NFT plans . Not only that, but he even went so far as to call blockchain games " boring ."
Sega hardly wants to know anything about blockchain or NFT anymore, apparently
Sega's pro-blockchain announcement came in 2021, when it confirmed a partnership with a company called Double Jump Tokyo to create NFTs of some of its side franchises to see if they could be used in future games. They rode the wave of big-money-and-easy promises they'd sugarcoat artists with, that NFTs were everywhere by 2021, and a lot of people were apparently getting rich selling them. But the NFT market experienced a rapid decline in late spring 2022, for a number of reasons, and while it is trying to rebound, it is far from the boom of 2021.
Sega no longer has any reason to pursue blockchain or NFTs, at least for now. According to co-COO Shuji Utsumi, Sega is reassessing whether blockchain technology will ever make sense in gaming . Utsumi said that play-to-earn games weren't fun, and therefore he didn't see the point in them.
But it's important to clarify that Sega hasn't completely ruled out NFTs , at least not for its biggest franchise games. It could still allow third parties to create cryptocurrency-backed tokens based on some of its lesser-known titles, such as Virtua Fighter and Three Kingdoms, as has already happened. It's not that Sega has forgotten about them, but we can't expect any major projects with franchises like Sonic, Yakuza, or Persona for now, though we might see some smaller games.
