Amazon is working on its own NFT marketplace, and to promote it has decided to give away free NFTs to Prime subscribers.
These are online gaming related NFTs that will be released through the Prime Gaming portal.
Amazon Prime and free NFTs
Amazon Prime is a paid service.
By subscribing for a few euros per month, Amazon customers receive certain benefits, such as the ability to receive their purchased products with fast delivery times or access to certain additional services.
Among the additional services available to subscribers, the most popular is undoubtedly Prime Video, which provides access to a video-on-demand platform of films and TV series. After Netflix, it is one of the most popular streaming platforms in the world, along with Disney Plus.
Another popular service is Prime Music, a music streaming platform with over 2 million songs.
Other services available to subscribers include Prime Reading, Prime Pantry, Prime Now, Prime Day and Prime Gaming.
Prime Gaming in particular is none other than the new name for Twitch Prime in 2020.
Twitch is a well-known Amazon portal dedicated to live video feeds, used by many streamers around the world, but especially by gamers. Amazon Prime Gaming will allow Prime users to access this content without having a Twitch account.
On Prime Gaming, subscribers can redeem free video games and various external video game rewards. It also allows for a free paid subscription to Twitch affiliates or partners.
Amazon: free NFT
Amazon Prime subscribers can access Prime Gaming, where they will find a selection of NFTs that they can request for free and use within blockchain-based games.
Typically these are playable characters, outfits or special skins, particularly in the games Mojo Melee, Blankos Block Party, My Pet Hooligan and NFL Rivals.
For Brawlers, formerly known as Blockchain Brawlers, you can request the free Mike Yellerbelly character, as well as eight deck cards and three strategic moves.
As for Mojo Melee, there is a free pack that includes an NFT polygon for platypus champion Veren Mostelier and a free game pack of 885 Hours.
My Pet Hooligan, on the other hand, is a game that will support NFTs in the future, so the Amazon promotion applies to in-game items that are not tokenised.
As for NFL Rivals, it is not really NFT either, but a booster pack of 10 basic player cards.
NFT in gaming
Although the market for artistic NFTs collapsed in 2022, they are becoming increasingly popular in the gaming world.
The advantage is that because NFTs reside on public blockchains outside of the games themselves, they are not only freely exchangeable on any marketplace that supports them, but also potentially usable in different games.
And as non-replicable, non-falsifiable digital objects whose ownership is secure, they are perfect for trading.
At the moment, NFT marketplaces mainly trade artistic NFTs, but the more games that support NFTs, the more potential there is for trading non-fungible game tokens.
The NFT Marketplace
It is no coincidence that Amazon is working on its own NFT marketplace.
It will most likely be dedicated to gaming NFTs, rather than artistic NFTs, as the company has its sights set on online gaming.
It is also no coincidence that Amazon bought Twitch Interactive for USD 970 million in 2014.
The Twitch.tv platform was only launched in 2011, but by 2013 it had become the world’s largest eSports streaming platform. The following year, it joined the Amazon galaxy, and almost ten years have passed since then.
Some time later, Amazon launched Twitch Prime, which was later renamed Amazon Prime Gaming three years ago, and at that point the company’s interest in online gaming became abundantly clear.
At this point, it is more than logical to expect the launch of an Amazon NFT marketplace specifically dedicated to gaming.
However, there are other NFT marketplaces that are already well established, such as OpenSea and Blur, which have been around for several years. They boomed in 2021, although this boom was followed by a speculative bubble that burst during 2022.
However, the current major NFT marketplaces are specifically dedicated to the artistic NFT market, and this actually opens up space for Amazon’s possible marketplace dedicated to games instead.
