Published on: 05/05/2022
NFT sales drops by 92 percent since September
The much-hyped NFT industry is facing a slump after sales prices dropped by 92 percent since September last year.
According to a report by NunFungible and the Wall Street Journal, the daily sales average this week is sitting at a low number of 19,000 compared to that of seven months ago at 225,000.
Moreover, the industry is also facing yet another slump in online search interests towards NFT, its technology and tradeable digital assets such as artworks on online ledgers crashed by an all-time low of 89 percent.
NFT prices drops despite company select support
Earlier this week on Wednesday, NFT daily sales spiked to 24,000 from 19,000. The number, however, is way less than hitting six digits.
The gaming industry, in particular, or the select few companies began to express their interests in the yet mature NFT industry. Big names gaming studios such as Konami are transforming their classic titles to NFTs, Ubisoft alongside their NFTs microtransaction, and Square Enix with select titles sold with a focus on blockchain.
Other than gaming companies, a government-backed minting company, Royal Mint, which produces coins for the United Kingdom announced last month the launch of an NFT backed directly by the UK sometime in summer this year.
“Unlike the EU and US, the UK has a small number of regulators, and central government sets the overall framework and can take decisive action,” the economic secretary John Glenn at April’s Innovate Global Finance Summit 2022 said.
“We can move very nimbly.”
In addition to this, American businessman and a prominent figure in the gaming industry Reggie Fils-Aimé is optimistic about NFTs. The former COO of Nintendo America dubbed himself, “a believer in blockchain.”
“I think it’s a really compelling technology. I’m also a believer in the concept of ‘play to own’ within video games, and I say this as a player where I may have invested 50 hours, 100 hours, or 300 hours in a game, and when I’m ready to move on to something else, wouldn’t it be great to monetize what I’ve built?”
“I bet I’d have some takers here today if I wanted to sell my Animal Crossing island from the latest Nintendo Switch version; I’d like to be able to monetize that. Blockchain technology embedded in the code would enable me to do that.” the 61-year-old said.
Despite clear and apparent support, NFTs’ downward spiral trend was fairly noticeable last year. When the first-ever tweet made by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey was sold at a whopping valuation of $2.9 million in March, the said item was valued way less and did not even pass $14,000 bids in an auction.
’70 percent gaming developers not interested in NFT’, survey says
However, in a survey made by the Game Developers Conference’s annual State of the Game Industry Report, 70 percent of gaming developers expressed they are “not interested” in NFTs, 21 percent said “somewhat interested” and only seven said “very interested.”
“How this hasn’t been identified as a pyramid scheme is beyond me,” a developer wrote. “These technologies are still not using sustainable energy and are a target for money laundering.”
Other developers in the survey expressed they felt uncomfortable that there is an existing market push for NFTs integration into video games. Such an idea received plain rejections from gamers in fear of it being yet another convoluted cash grab effort, similar to loot boxes and microtransaction.
“What benefit does it have putting these systems into our games? Who is using these things? It feels like a very small audience,” another developer added.
