Konami looks to cash in on NFT mania with digital collectible collection

Konami became the latest gaming company to jump on the non-fungible token bandwagon Thursday with the announcement of the Konami Memorial NFT Collection. But rather than focusing on in-game cosmetics or supply-constrained virtual land as some other publishers have, Konami is simply offering a small set of NFT-backed artwork and music drawn from the Castlevania series in honor of its 35th anniversary.

Konami’s collection includes 14 individual NFTs representing five songs from the NES Castlevania games, six short videos showing off special item use in the first Castlevania, two pieces of hand-drawn promotional art from Circle of the Moon, and a unique piece of “Dracula’s Castle” pixel art inspired by the games. Each item in the collection is a “one of one” cryptographic signature that will be posted on the Ethereum blockchain after an OpenSea auction set to start on January 12. Those auctions have an effective reserve price of one “wrapped Ethereum,” or about $3,350 at today’s market value.

The NFTs will represent the associated digital collectible, whose “minting” is linked to Konami’s verified account to help establish provenance. Konami also promises that an “NFT with the exact same data will not be resold, but similar NFTs tied to the same game title may be resold in the future,” making them “unique” on the blockchain (even if the underlying images and sounds are endlessly copiable).

That said, the terms of use make it clear that “the purchaser will not, by purchasing the NFT, obtain intellectual property rights (e.g. copyrights, trademark rights) in relation to the data linked to the NFT. Thus, the purchaser may not use the data linked to the NFT (e.g. reproductions) for commercial purposes.” In other words, the digital trinkets themselves are just crypto-signed limited-edition representations of these digital works and don’t convey “ownership” of the actual work in any real sense.

Whoever wins the initial OpenSea auction for these items will also have their nickname listed on the Konami Memorial NFT website (after the company approves that nickname for appropriateness, of course). But that public listing is only guaranteed to last through the end of 2022, making it a bit less appealing than the initial ownership’s allegedly “eternal” life on the Ethereum ledger.

Despite the new collectible offering, Konami has continued to neglect the actual Castlevania game franchise in recent years. Since 2014’s Lords of Shadow 2, the only game in the series has been 2019’s Grimoire of Souls, a free-to-play mobile title that has now been reworked as an Apple Arcade exclusive.

It’s been done

If Konami’s efforts sound familiar, that might be because Atari (or the corporate entity bearing its name after decades of sales and turmoil) did something similar nine months ago, well before the current NFT mania had set in. That project raised over $110,000 in its first wave of limited-edition Centipede-themed NFTs—and even more as NFTs representing Pong and other Atari games rolled out after launch.

The post-launch life of those collectible investments has been mixed. None of the nine Centipede cartridge NFTs sold on OpenSea has been resold in the intervening months, for instance, but less limited Atari VCS cartridge NFTs continue to change hands on NFTHive, some at prices significantly above their initial offering.

Atari’s NFT selections also included one with an interesting bonus for the initial purchaser. The package offered a Centipede arcade cabinet NFT that included “a beautifully restored, and fully playable, original Centipede coin-op arcade machine” with “a unique augmented reality experience, unlockable only with the physical cabinet.” That NFT ended up selling for $12,250, and while the value of the NFT could go in any direction, the sentimental value of the cabinet is sure to persist.

https://arstechnica.com/?p=1824183