Square Enix Doubles Down on Blockchain Games Again

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Square Enix is dou­bling down on its plans to release blockchain games in 2023 and beyond. Despite the neg­a­tive back­lash sur­round­ing the inclu­sion of NFTs and the blockchain in gam­ing, the pub­lish­er remains con­fi­dent in its upcom­ing blockchain-relat­ed titles that will seem­ing­ly con­tin­ue to arrive this year, the next year and poten­tial­ly the year after that.

In response to an investor con­cerned that Square Enix’s upcom­ing slate of Final Fan­ta­sy games are too good for the com­pa­ny to keep grow­ing (that’s a con­cern?), Square Enix CEO Yosuke Mat­su­da respond­ed by reaf­firm­ing its stance on NFT and blockchain games releas­ing this year and beyond. This isn’t what any­one real­ly want­ed to hear espe­cial­ly in light of the gam­ing com­mu­ni­ty active­ly push­ing back against blockchain games and NFT projects in the gam­ing industry.

READ MORE – Xbox Officially Confirms It Won’t Attend E3 2023

Mat­su­da stat­ed in the full response to investors:

“Major title launch­es will not be con­cen­trat­ed sole­ly in FY2024/3. We have orga­nized our pipeline so that we will have a good spread of new releas­es in FY2025/3 and beyond as well. We also hope that you will look for­ward to the blockchain games we have plan to launch in FY2024/3 and thereafter.”

Plans could very eas­i­ly change at Square Enix since Mat­su­da will step down as the company’s pres­i­dent this June and be replaced by cur­rent com­pa­ny direc­tor Takashi Kiryu. The hope is that Square Enix, fol­low­ing Matsuda’s depar­ture, will recon­sid­er its blockchain plans which all seem to be pret­ty moti­vat­ed by Matsuda’s divi­sive decision-making.

Sev­er­al gam­ing com­pa­nies have attempt­ed to break into the blockchain and NFT space in the past to lit­tle suc­cess. Ubisoft was per­haps the most noto­ri­ous case of mass push­back from the com­mu­ni­ty after it attempt­ed to kick off NFT-focused projects start­ing with Ghost Recon Break­point. Need­less to say, the project didn’t work out so well. Back in July 2022, over a year since NFTs start­ed to gain momen­tum, the cryp­tocur­ren­cy mar­ket crashed and NFT sales plunged to all-time lows.

The mar­ket is still extreme­ly volatile right now and NFTs aren’t near­ly as valu­able as they once were, depend­ing on which pock­et of the mar­ket you look at. It’s unclear how Square Enix will con­vince play­ers that blockchain is the right direc­tion to go since no NFT projects apart from Sym­bio­gen­e­sis have been announced yet.

Source: Stephen Toti­lo



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