Sega has registered a trademark in Japan for ‘Sega NFT’

Its CEO recently said it would abandon its plans if NFTs were seen as “simple money-making”

Sega has registered a trademark for the term “Sega NFT” in Japan.

The new trademark filing published today by the Japan Patent Office was applied for in late December 2021 and includes the Sega NFT logo above.

Sega indicated last year that it intended to begin selling NFTs via a Japanese social media post. However, last week its CEO Haruki Satomi appeared to have cooled on the idea somewhat, acknowledging the current negativity around the NFT landscape.

The new trademark could suggest that it intends to move ahead with its NFT plans before gauging any reaction from the community.

During a recent management meeting, Satomi indicated Sega would be willing to walk back on plans to create NFTs if they were perceived as a “simple money-making” scheme, rather than something that can captivate users.

“In terms of NFT, we would like to try out various experiments and we have already started many different studies and considerations but nothing is decided at this point regarding P2E,” he said.

“There have been many announcements about this already including at overseas but there are users who show negative reactions at this point.

“We need to carefully assess many things such as how we can mitigate the negative elements, how much we can introduce this within the Japanese regulation, what will be accepted and what will not be by the users.

“Then, we will consider this further if this leads to our mission ‘Constantly Creating, Forever Captivating’, but if it is perceived as simple money-making, I would like to make a decision not to proceed.”

Many game companies have already started selling digital items as NFTs, such as Ubisoft and Konami, while others including Square Enix have expressed enthusiasm for the tech trend.

Earlier this month, Konami announced that it would be auctioning off a “Konami Memorial NFT collection”, featuring 14 unique artworks from the Castlevania series, celebrating its 35th anniversary.

Previously, in a New Year letter published during the holiday break, Square Enix president Yosuke Matsuda committed to making blockchain and NFT games a part of its games portfolio.

Matsuda’s comments were criticised by some corners of the games industry. However, they appear to have gone down well with the market.