After works of art, music or cinema, video games are the new target of NFTs. VSCertificate of authenticity for an object, virtual or real, the NFT is unique and cannot be exchanged for an equivalent, hence its name: “Non-Fungible Token”, which means “non-fungible token” in French, highly rated digital goods, but still reduced to a limited audience.
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Almost unknown last year, now backed by previously unseen scenes from the film pulp Fiction, exclusive albums, virtual sneakers … NFTs have aroused immense enthusiasm among creators, but have not yet become mass objects. The French video game giant Ubisoft has just issued 2,000 for equipment (weapons, helmets, vehicles) that can be used in its shooter Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint. A first step to democratize the NFT beyond the only insiders?
“Today, NFTs remain a niche market. We, on the contrary, are a very popular industry. The idea is to bring these two universes together in the best possible way and make NFT accessible to as many people as possible.“, argues with AFP Nicolas Pouard, vice-president of the laboratory of strategic innovations at Ubisoft.
Ubisoft is not the only video game publisher to take an interest in it. Its American competitor Electronic Arts (The sims, Fifa) has announced that it also wants to get started, while the mobile games specialist Voodoo plans to invest $ 200 million in studios dedicated to the “blockchain”, the “block chain” on which the NFT authentication process is based.
The “play-to-earn” model, in video games, such as Axie Infinity or Sorare, which make it possible to earn cryptocurrencies and NFTs, and therefore to help the most skilled players to make ends meet, knows at the same time an unprecedented development. “Imagine how many years we’ve been playing video games for nothing. Today, you can take two hours of your time a day to play an amazing game and be able to add an additional source of income.“, says Franklin Ovalles, an American forty-something collector of NFT.
However, the whole industry is not in unison. “I believe there is a lot of speculation and experimentation going on right now, and some of the creations I see are more for profit than entertainment.“, confided mid-November the boss of the division of video game Xbox of Microsoft, Phil Spencer, to the American site Axios. The first foray of Ubisoft in this field allowed him to sell his 2000” digital objects “in 30 minutes , while the development of crypto-assets, a category of virtual objects to which NFTs but also bitcoin for example belong, seems limitless.
“The next five years is a billion people“, even”many“billions, who will access crypto-assets, wants to believe Pascal Gauthier, boss of Ledger, a platform of secure portfolios that allow them to be stored. In the immediate future, the market only benefits a minority of investors, and presents risks. “Only 28.5% of NFTs bought during their creation and then sold on a platform generate a profit“, says the specialist data platform Chainalysis.
“As long as interest rates are low and money is virtually free, people will be taking risks in the world of NFTs. Having said that, I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the more speculative NFTs lost most of their value in a matter of weeks. “, warns Jonathan Teplitsky, head of an agency specializing in NFTs.
However, this should not discourage other parts of the culture market. The French startup Edith & Nous, which facilitates the connection between authors and publishers and secures the sending of manuscripts thanks to the blockchain, aims to eventually launch NFTs in the field of literature and publishing. “This is a huge potential for us“, explains Valentin Vauchelles, its managing director, including for”pre-financing of aspiring authors. “