Square Enix president Yosuke Motatsuda has expressed his opinions about new technology and emerging trends such as NFTs and blockchain gaming. Matsuda discusses the Square Enix business strategy and explains how they will be included in their future games.
Square Enix Reveals New Tech Strategy
Square Enix president Yosuke Miatsuda has provided details on the next steps in incorporating new blockchain-based technology into his new year plans. Square Enix is behind multimillion-dollar games like Final Fantasy. In a new year’s letter, Matsuda explains that these new technologies, including non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and the concept of the metaverse, had a rise during the last year, and that these will evolve to a more actionable phase during this year.
Matsuda noted the importance of them to their overall business strategy and stated:
This abstract idea will begin to be concretized in product and service offerings. I hope it will have an even greater impact on the business.
As a consequence of this, the president pointed that the company is conducting aggressive research and development (R&D) efforts and investments in areas that include blockchain gaming and artificial intelligence (AI).
Decentralized Gaming’s Incentives
Matsuda makes a distinction between traditional gaming (what he calls “play-for-fun”), and the new blockchain gaming that has been called “play-to-earn,” (P2E) giving the incentives that some of these games have to earn a token through game actions. This distinction is the difference between centralized gaming which relies on unidirectional data flows (from creators to consumers) in crafting stories and decentralized gaming where users will play a greater role within the economic system created by token incentives.
Modders (third parties who alter games in an effort to make them more enjoyable or to add additional elements) will be able to transform their contribution into a real earning opportunity by constructing the game. Matsuda explains:
There are many motivations that can inspire gamers to connect and play with each other, from having fun to making money to helping others. This is possible thanks to blockchain-based tokens. Our games will be self-sustaining by including viable token economies.
These new elements have been met with negative reactions in traditional gaming. GSC Game World was a smaller company that had to cancel its plans to include NFT elements within Stalker 2 (an upcoming video game). This decision came after a poor reception from the general public. Another major developer Ubisoft was faced with a similar issue when its NFT marketplace, Quartz received 95% negative responses on Youtube.
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