Final Fantasy Prez isn’t letting go of NFTs after a terrible year

A year agoSquare Enix President Yosuke Matsuda said NFTs (non-fungible tokens) and blockchain gaming are the future. Then the year 2022 happened and it became clear to all but the most die-hard NFT investors and crypto bros that all this digital JPEG ownership was a scam that the public continues to largely ignore. But apparently anyway this, Matsuda and Square Enix are not giving up on NFTs or blockchain games. In fact, it sounds like the company will double its “blockchain entertainment” by 2023.

As a reminder, NFTs are digital items that you don’t actually own. Instead, you buy a receipt stating that you own that picture of a monkey or whatever in its entirety, and then you can collect it and hope to someday resell it for a huge profit. But you probably won’t make any money Selling expensive NFTs like the market around them has been doing completely collapsed. It turns out that overpriced JPEGs are not a stable investment. Who could have guessed? (Millions of people have done it.) Anyway, Square Enix will like some little things near-universal public backlash to NFTs or Huge cryptocurrency exchanges go bankrupt overnight prevent the Japanese publisher from continuing to invest heavily in “Web 3.0”.

In an open New Year’s letter dated Jan, Matsuda said that Square Enix is ​​investing in various business areas but is “most focused on blockchain entertainment.” In the letter, he used a soup of buzzwords and empty ideas to try to paint a picture that blockchain technology was not dying or collapsing, but was actually growing and becoming more popular. Evidence cited by the President of Square Enix: Web 3.0 has become “a well-established buzzword among business people.”

After a very brief mention of the Massive FTX bust that happened in November – where a $32 billion crypto exchange exploded overnight and destabilized almost the entire market in the process – Matsuda addressed the ongoing opposition to NFTs and blockchain technology. This is all part of the plan, according to the president, and he suggested that new technologies like this often create “confusion” at first before people accept them.

“After overcoming such societal tides, some of these technologies and frameworks gradually become part of people’s lives, eventually leading to new businesses and growth,” Matsuda said. “Following the excitement and buzz that surrounded NFTs and the Metaverse in 2021, 2022 was a year of great volatility in the blockchain-related space. However, if this proves to be a step in a process leading to the creation of rules and a more transparent business environment, it will definitely have benefited the growth of blockchain entertainment.”

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Continue reading: Square Enix’s Final Fantasy VII NFTs are silly little things

The President of Square Enix penned a similar letter back in 2022, although it was widely shared online by many. People who criticized his vision for the company were particularly dissatisfied with a part of the letter in which Matsuda spoke of people playing “to contribute” rather than people just playing for fun. Still months later, in April 2022, interview with Yahoo, the Square Enix boss didn’t budge and went on to predict that the future of gaming would include NFTs and the blockchain.

And like last year, Matsuda once again offers no concrete or even vague plans for how NFTs or blockchain will improve video games or how the technology will offer new options for developers or gamers. Instead, Matsuda just says the company has “several” blockchain-based games in development, including this one previously announced symbiogenesis. Excite I think?

“Blockchain has been an object of amusement and a source of turmoil,” Matsuda summarized, “but with that in mind, we hope blockchain games will enter a new phase of growth in 2023.”

It’s not surprising that Square Enix continues to focus on NFTs, as it did last year The publisher sold three game studios– Crystal Dynamics, Eidos Montreal and Square Enix Montreal – to monolithic Embracer Group and all to continue funding their future investments in blockchain technology, AI and cloud gaming.

Meanwhile, Square Enix has spent the last six months or so Shutdown of various online games including Babylon’s fall and Final Fantasy VII Battle Royale spin-off The first soldier. I’m sure that’s something to worry about as the company pushes to include NFTs in future titles. Yes, your investment in Square Enix’s digital worlds is completely safe and long-lasting…