American retail gaming giant, GameStop announced the launching of their new NFT division. This is according to the Wall Street Journal. The paper states that the Gaming giant is to open its own NFT marketplace and is seeking further crypto collaborations.
GameStop recently brought on board 20 new employees to help set up their new online marketplace. This will allow gamers to barter, sell and buy virtual in-game items. Referencing insiders who talked to the WSJ, the marketplace will open in 2022. Gaming companies have been asked to put their NFTs up on the marketplace. Gamestop expects its marketplace to compete with OpenSea, the most popular NFT marketplace, which was recently valued at $13 billion.
The report in the WSJ also states that GameStop is close to striking partnerships with two crypto companies. Therefore, this should give them an edge when investing in games and looking to promote games with NFT features.
In all, insiders say that GameStop intends investing $10’s of millions into a dozen or so partnerships in the coming year.
The turn towards embracing NFTs has been forced on GameStop due to the march of digital downloads. The company’s business model has been hit badly by this march. Physical retail properties continue to close, and revenue continues to decrease.
However, with the announcement of the new NFT marketplace share prices in the company soared by over 20%, as stated in a recent CNBC report.
