- Square Enix President issued the yearly letter on the New Year.
- The Final Fantasy creators will focus on blockchain technology this year.
- The NFT sector has met with user backlash from traditional gamers.
More Focus Towards NFT and Blockchain
With gaming companies trying to bring newer concepts to scale their audience, they are focused on investing in cutting-edge technologies. Recently, president of Square Enix, Yosuke Matsude, said the organization will increase the focus on blockchain technology this year. In his yearly letter, he stated that they may aggressively invest in the technology as it gained massive recognition during 2022, especially due to Web3.
He also mentioned that the Japanese government is pushing the businesses in the blockchain industry already. The authorities signed off a plan dubbed the Priority Policy program for Realizing Digital Society. He also mentioned the rise and the fall of cryptocurrency sector people witnessed during 2021 and 2022.
The Square Enix president said that 2021 created a lot of excitement among the NFT community followed by immense volatility in blockchain associated space the next year. Moreover, he said that “If we consider traditional gaming as a centralized space, then blockchain games should be a self-sustaining decentralized model.
The letter further went on to discuss NFTs in 2021. The president wrote that content associated with Blockchain and NFTs should lead to monetization. Companies in traditional gaming have previously tried to bring non-fungible tokens to their ecosystem. In 2021, Ubisoft announced “Digits” associated with Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint.
Though non-fungible tokens can empower gamers to own and monetize their content, traditional gamers have opposed this integration. The theory behind this remains that bringing NFTs may take out the fun element from the games. Users play a game for passion and entertainment which may fade if these blockchain-based assets are used in-game.
Play to earn games have not become mainstream still the daily active users in networks like The Sandbox, Axie Infinity, Decentraland and more. The user may come thinking that all they have to do is just play the game in order to generate a revenue stream. This can seriously damage the in-game skills too.
However, implementing NFTs to traditional games can help eliminate the fake projects running in the name of P2E games. No one would doubt a “Final Fantasy NFT” as a fraudulent effort done by Square Enix itself. Still the gamer backlash has kept the idea away to maintain the sector’s integrity.
The NFT sector has already lost a major value last year where collections like BAYC, otherdeeds, and more have suffered a lot. If Square Enix is about to bring blockchain on their network then they need to make sure it does not end up like Ubisoft’s Digits.
Source: https://www.thecoinrepublic.com/2023/01/03/blockchain-games-will-transition-to-a-new-stage-of-growth-in-2023-yosuke-matsuda/