Yesterday, Japanese video game developer Square Enix announced that Is selling some of its studios and more than 50 game ips -- including legendary studios Crystal Dynamics, Eidos-Montreal, Square Enix Montreal, tomb Raider, Deus Ex, Final Fantasy, and more -- To focus on blockchain, artificial intelligence and cloud technology.
The studios and assets will be acquired by video game publisher Embracer Group in a deal valued at approximately $300 million that is expected to close sometime between July and September. According to Square Enix's filing, the proceeds from the sale will allow it to "pursue new businesses by advancing investments including blockchain, artificial intelligence and cloud." It also said the sale would allow it to improve relations between its Tokyo and overseas divisions, with the aim of "maximising global revenues" from future game releases.
However, many gamers are puzzled by Square Enix's "dirty operation" of selling off popular IP and are not interested in Square Enix's 2022 strategy theme -- blockchain games.
Square Enix's blockchain foray
Square Enix is a Japanese video game developers, specializes in the fantasy genre of the game, with a large number of popular IP, such as "final fantasy", lara croft: tomb raider, "Deus ex", etc., and such as "Neil" carried out in recent years, such as "amazing life" is also acclaimed, established its the leader position in the game industry. While the quality of Square Enix's games has declined in recent years, it seems to have a new goal: to enter the blockchain industry.
Yosuke Matsuda, president and board representative of Square Enix, has expressed interest in NFT, blockchain games, and the metaverse several times in the last year or two. In his 2022 New Year's Letter, Yosuke Matsuda highlighted NFT, which was in the global spotlight during the previous year, arguing that while NFT trades are now somewhat "overheated" and speculative, they are correcting as they become more common: "2021 is not only the first year of metasverse development, but also the first year of NFT, as it is the year that NFT is embraced by a rapidly expanding user base. However, we do see examples of overheated trading in NFT-based digital goods, with some speculative overtones. This is obviously not an ideal situation, but I would like to see the right outcome -- digital goods transactions becoming more and more common among the public."
For the chain block game, matsuda the dielectric argues that based on tokens of the game can not only provide incentives for the player, can also for those who provide incentives for creative players in the game: "whether single-player or online games, traditionally involves one-way process, provide game creators to players like us. By contrast, blockchain games are growing from their inception, built on the premise of a token economy, and thus have the potential for self-sustaining growth for games. Advances in the token economy are likely to further this trend. I think the play-to-earn concept that gets people excited is a good example...... Going forward, blockchain gaming, or decentralized gaming, will be a big strategic theme for Square Enix in 2022."
Square Enix entered The blockchain space as early as 2019, when it participated in an undisclosed $2.01 million funding round from Animoca Brands for its virtual world game The Sandbox, But Square Enix actually received SAND tokens and future equity notes. SAND is a transaction token used throughout The Sandbox ecosystem and will be used by game players, creators and publishers, allowing content creators and players to exchange assets and game content.
SE, the Japanese game giant, sold off its IP to develop blockchain games. Is it a "smart adventure" or a "blind exploration"?
Image: Screenshot of The Sandbox creative mode, Animoca Brands
In May 2021, Square Enix announced its entry into the NFT market, partnering with Japan's leading blockchain company Double Jump.Tokyo to launch an NFT digital collectible card for the mobile game King Arthur Million. The NFT series is based on LINE Blockchain, a Blockchain developed by Japanese social giant LINE, and purchasers can manage it directly from LINE Wallet. However, these NFTS are not integrated into the gameplay, but serve as digital art. But that didn't deter avid Japanese players, and the NFT was sold out twice for its "Million King Arthur" IP.
In April of this year, Square Enix announced that they would continue to publish NFT series and integrate NFT content into the game in the future with the launch of LINE NFT market.
Square Enix and other big game companies
After reading the comments on Square Enix's decision to sell game IP in order to invest more in blockchain, we can see that many gamers are puzzled by Square Enix's decision to sell blockbusters. Aside from the fact that sequels to these great games haven't been released for a long time, Part of the reason is still not buying into NFT (or cryptocurrency).
SE, the Japanese game giant, sold off its IP to develop blockchain games. Is it a "smart adventure" or a "blind exploration"?
When Ubisoft first launched its own NFT publishing platform, Quartz, in early December, it was met with a wave of resistance from players, even though ubisoft had promoted NFT's PoS consensus-based energy blockchain, Tezos, to great fanfare. To put it simply, Ubisoft's games will publish NFT on Quartz and can be traded on the NFT marketplace based on the Tezos blockchain, where players can sell their equipment after playing the game and take their assets out of the game. Currently only ghost Recon: Breakpoint is available for PC, and players receive NFT for free by completing various missions in the game. We can see the ghost Recon: Breakpoint NFT deal list on The Tezos-based Rarible.
SE, the Japanese game giant, sold off its IP to develop blockchain games. Is it a "smart adventure" or a "blind exploration"?
Ubisoft, which was the first to really incorporate NFT into its AAA games, failed in terms of volume. In the two weeks since ghost Recon: Breakpoint's NFT launch, there have been only 15 transactions on third-party NFT markets, or 1% of the total number of releases at the time, according to Liz Edwards, a twitter user. Players have demonstrated that selling in-game items as NFT is not welcome. But Ubisoft didn't back down. "What we're doing is really beneficial," Nicolas Pouard, vice president of Ubisoft's Strategic Innovation Lab, said in an interview. But [gamers] don't understand now that there are a lot of habits that players have to break, a lot of ingrained mindsets that they have to change. It takes time."
The current attitude towards NFT is polarised: proponents find it tempting to do more than just allow players to use the same items in different games, namely interoperability. In the longer term, NFT will make the concept of the "metadverse" a reality; But opponents argue that the NFT market has entered an era of "irrational" exuberance, full of "hype" and "speculation", and that NFT wastes energy.
Ubisoft, Square Enix, EA, Sega, etc., are all laying out NFT, so what's the "charm" of incorporating NFT into games?
The first is the ownership that NFT gives to the player. In most traditional games, the User Code of Conduct clause states that the player only has the right to use, not the right to own, the game account and its contents. When the game is shut down, players can't trade their accounts or get their money back. Once a player has a game asset in the form of NFT, the asset is forever stored in their digital wallet and can be traded freely, regardless of how the game evolves.
Second, security, transparency and anonymity. This is the main advantage. By using blockchain, gamers can safely and reliably trade their game assets. All transactions are publicly visible on the Internet, and players' transaction histories are recorded, providing incontrovertible proof of ownership, which means they don't have to go through the red tape to prove who they are and what they own before making a transaction. But ownership can only be transferred through encrypted signatures, so even if the entire network has access to the player's transaction history, the player remains anonymous.
Finally, the most revolutionary feature of blockchain games is play-to-earn. Players can earn coins or assets by completing certain challenges. Tokens earned in the game can be exchanged for other cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin or Ethereum, or even used to buy real-world assets. This allows players to earn real money from playing the game. Blockchain games offer players meaningful investment opportunities that can be sold for a profit.
Ubisoft, Square Enix, and the other big game companies that have announced their plans for NFT see a future in which players can create value in NFT games that can be exchanged for real money, even beyond the game itself, for as long as the demand exists. Still, gamers are right to worry about blockchain changing their precious entertainment world, and NFT still has a lot of real issues to solve before it can be truly embraced by gamers. Square Enix needs to learn from trial and trial, balance the gameplay and quality that gamers want with all the rights and interests of blockchain, and be a "savvy explorer" in the new field of blockchain gaming, rather than a "blind pioneer."