In January, Konami showed off a brand-new NFT line called the Konami Memorial, kick-starting the project with a slew of JPEGs from Castlevania. While it got a lot of backlash online, the project actually made Konami over $160,000.
What's more, that number comes from only 14 sales. That means that each piece sold for an average of $11,000, but one went for much more than that. The artwork of Dracula's Castle – a map from the original game – sold for $26,538.96. However, the NFTs were sold on OpenSea who take a 2.5 percent commission on each transaction. As such, Konami's $160,000 figure shrinks to a still-substantial $157,000.
That number will only grow as Konami gets 10 percent of the cut every time one of its NFTs is sold again. And Castlevania isn't where Konami is ending its NFT production – in fact, it called this the "first" project as it plans to utilise other games in its library. We could and likely will see Metal Gear Solid and Silent Hill Memorials down the line – Pyramid Head JPEGs could fetch a pretty penny for Konami, but that isn't mentioning the environmental cost that comes with dealing in cryptocurrency as NFTs do.
Cryptocurrency leaves a huge carbon footprint as NFTs are responsible for millions of tons of carbon dioxide generated by crypto mining. Some argue that this problem can and will be solved in the future while others believe the environmental impact is an unavoidable side effect of using digital currency. Nonetheless, in their current state, NFTs are incredibly harmful, something that few developers and publishers getting into them are addressing.
Sega has just registered an NFT trademark, pointing to an imminent announcement, while actor Troy Baker is launching the "world's first Voice NFT." But it goes beyond the industry to retailers as GameStop is trying to compete with OpenSea, the largest NFT marketplace in the world, by launching its own digital storefront. Everyone from Square Enix to Ubisoft is joining the racket, and it doesn't look like it's slowing down anytime soon.
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