SEGA will start selling NFTs in 2021 to help stabilize earnings

SEGA plans to mine its rich vein of characters and IP to sell NFT (non-fungible tokens) artwork in 2021, the company today announced.

After the first bit of digital art sold for tens of millions, everyone is jumping into NFTs; concept artists, digital mavericks, and of course, games publishers. First Square Enix jumped into the NFT craze, and now SEGA is following suit.

The company's motivations for NFT adoption are clear and SEGA is simply chasing new earnings avenues. SEGA's 9-month earnings slid in 2020 due to coronavirus interruption of segments like amusement and pachinko; Net sales were down 25%, operating income was down 51%, and total profits were negative throughout the period as the company weathered COVID-19 shocks as well as new internal restructuring plans.

"SEGA Corporation will begin sales of NFT digital content utilizing blockchain technology in collaboration with double jump.tokyo Inc. by the summer of 2021," reads a recent press release.

"Under this initiative, SEGA will sequentially sell a wealth of digital assets, such as visual art from the time of launch and video and background music used in games, as NFT* content for a number of classic IPs that were developed for hardware released by SEGA in the past and are still highly popular around the world. This will be the first of many such sales. In the future, we will also explore services that will enable users to effectively utilize and enjoy their NFT content."