PlayStation Stars: Sony rewards loyalty with PSN credits and ‘not with NFTs’
With PlayStation Stars, Sony is introducing a loyalty system that allows players on PlayStation game consoles to earn credits for the PlayStation Store, for example. The program will co-exist with the PlayStation Plus subscription and will be launched later this year – Sony leaves open when exactly.
Sony wants to encourage players to play with points
Through a blog post, the manufacturer and publisher announce the free service. The only requirements to participate are access to a PlayStation console and a PlayStation Network account – a PlayStation Plus subscription is not required, but does provide additional benefits. The concept of PlayStation Stars is to allow participants to earn points as they play. This is done, for example, as a reward for starting a game for the first time in the month, for unlocking selected trophies and for winning tournaments. The first person to unlock the Platinum Trophy for a triple-A game in their own region will also be rewarded. Plus members also earn points for every PlayStation Store purchase.
NFTs are explicitly not part of the rewards
Bonuses include credit for said store, select games and other products, as well as digital collectibles. These are “digital images of things PlayStation fans love”, meaning, for example, virtual collectible figures of popular game characters or images of devices representing the history of PlayStation consoles. However, Sony is trying to move towards the Washington Post to emphasize that it is not about NFTs act – judging by the explicit refusal, the issuer prefers not to be associated with the tokens at all.
They are definitely not NFTs. Certainly not. You cannot trade or sell them. It does not use blockchain technologies and certainly not NFTs. Grace Chen, Sony
In contrast, a few other publishers recently announced that they would be integrating the crypto web more closely into their own games. For example, Ubisoft is working on in-game items based on NFTs and drafting a corresponding monetization concept through the NFT marketplace Quartz. Square Enix, on the other hand, went so far as to sell the rights to numerous major game series – including Tomb Raider and Deus Ex – in order to use the freed-up capital to invest in blockchain technologies.
There are still a few questions left unanswered
At the same time, it remains unclear to PlayStation Stars how Sony intends to weigh the merit-cost ratio of the rewards – there is no information yet on any conversion rates. It also remains unclear whether trophies that have already been unlocked will be taken into account in retrospect, or if the concept will only start with future titles; however, the latter seems more likely. Microsoft, meanwhile, is already offering a similar loyalty system with Xbox Rewards, and Sony’s announcement could, in part, be taken as a belated response to it.
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