Sony Only Launched an Ethereum Network—Will It Find PlayStation Games?

Soneium, a weighting channel for Ethereum, was unveiled by Sony on Monday, and its creators claim that it may help people learn crypto. But will that contain gaming—and precisely, Sony’s juggernaut PlayStation company and its many famous franchises?

Sota Watanabe, the director of Sony Block Solutions Labs, recently told that Soneium may bring “ordinary people” into the links, operating in the background as a professional core while enhancing experiences in fields like drama, music, and games.

On Soneium’s site, visitors can filtering through programs that are currently being built on Soneium, with “gaming” listed under a” customer” group.

The addition begs the question of whether PlayStation’s large franchises like God of War, Unknown, Gran Turismo, and many others may one day meet Soneium’s ecosystem.

The show’s team didn’t have any input for presently, a spokeswoman told . However, Sony could potentially use Soneium to integrate online assets into its games. &nbsp,

We’re excited about the choices that blockchain technology might offer gamers, but we don’t have any particular improvements to share on that front at this time, according to a Sony BLS director.

Decrypt’s GG reached out to PlayStation staff for comment, but it was unable to respond right away regarding the potential usage of Soneium for cryptocurrency game.

Soneium is being developed by Sony BLS, a Singapore-based company of the Chinese foreign firm. Sony Group Corporation and Startale Labs co-founded the business in 2023.

Sony has also been taking into account the potential for bitcoin technology, even when it comes to gambling.

Sony filed patent applications that gate blockchain and games before Soneium’s team was formed: One centered on tracking in-game goods using NFTs, the various established” super-fungible currencies”, which are essentially a pack of NFT in-game items.

Currently, users can access around a dozen Soneium-based games, most of which appear to be in early development. Those include Derby Race, a “pick-to-earn” horse racing game that takes the form of a mini app on the Telegram messaging platform, and OverTrip, a battle royale shooter&nbsp, “where the thrill of competition meets the world of staking” with meme coins and NFTs.

None of those games are made by Sony or partner Startale Labs, however. Anyone can create a permissionless network on which Soneium is a leader, and developers have created games based on Soneium’s assets like those of other chains like Solana and The Open Network.

A PlayStation title utilizing Soneium would be a significant change in the blockchain-based gaming market. No PlayStation console games as of this writing have front-facing crypto elements that players can play.

A full mainnet launch and token drop are anticipated for sometime in the fourth quarter of Off the Grid, a well-known battle royale shooter that is accessible early on PlayStation 4. It tracks user-owned items and other components on a GUNZ Avalanche L1 blockchain testnet.

However, Theodore Agranat, a Gunzilla Games Director of Web3, acknowledged that the crypto elements in the PS5 version of the game will have to be “handled differently” than they do on PC. More information on that front is anticipated closer to the launch of the GUNZ mainnet. Similar to other PS5-only crypto games, PS5 games are reducing or updating their blockchain components.

Additionally, it has been reported for well over a year that Rockstar Games may support digital assets in Grand Theft Auto 6, which is scheduled to be released this fall. However, there’s been no official word from the video game maker, and it’s banned the use of crypto and NFTs from player-run Grand Theft Auto 5 servers.

Rockstar Games argued that protecting trademarks and intellectual property by prohibiting” commercial exploitation” through the use of cryptocurrencies. Earlier this week, Sony BLS did much the same on Soneium, “blacklisiting” at least one meme coin that riffed on the name of a PlayStation character.