Square Enix’s New Year’s letter is mostly about NFTs, again

One year after releasing a letter that was derided for being focused on web3, the blockchain and NFTs, Square Enix president Yosuke Matsuda has once again released a New Year’s letter… focusing on web3, the blockchain and NFTs is.

It’s a puzzling sign that despite the industry’s rejection of the concept of NFTs over the past two years, causing even early evangelists like Ubisoft and EA to flee the concept, Square Enix stands alone about still trying to make this happen.

To be clear, Matsuda’s NFT references don’t just go to the side, in this letter they make up almost half of the whole thing. The 1,525-word letter has 655 words devoted to web3 and NFTs, and Matsuda waved away the collapse of the NFT market over the past year by calling it “volatility.”

– New technologies and frameworks lead to innovation, but they also create considerable confusion. After riding out such societal tides, some such technologies and frameworks gradually become part of people’s lives, eventually giving rise to new businesses and growth. After the excitement and excitement that surrounded NFTs and the metaverse in 2021, 2022 was a year of great volatility in the blockchain-related space. However, if this turns out to have been a step in a process that leads to the creation of rules and a more transparent business environment, it will definitely have been for the best for the growth of blockchain entertainment.

Keeping a steady eye on these environmental changes while considering from a higher perspective what Web 3.0 and blockchain entertainment is actually about offers a different view than if we focus on them solely in technological or speculative investment terms. As I said in last year’s New Year letter, if we consider traditional gaming to have become centralized, then blockchain gaming must operate based on a self-sustaining decentralized model. It’s that concept, that philosophy that I see is the key.”

It’s the old “people don’t hate NFTs in games, they just don’t understand them,” philosophy that Ubisoft once used before players rejected their attacks to web3, so they don’t even talk about it anymore.

The reason for this focus is because Matsuda reiterates that Square Enix has several blockchain games in development, and will launch even more this year. He hopes “blockchain games will move to a new stage of growth in 2023.”

It’s honestly astounding. It’s true, web3, crypto, the blockchain and NFTs aren’t dead as a concept despite recent declines, but when it comes to integration into video games, it’s been nothing short of disaster after disaster. Everything even tangentially related to NFTs from traditional publishers has been fried so hard it’s made these companies feel like they’ve touched hot stoves. In the wider NFT gaming space, we saw the complete collapse of the game held up as an example of the potential of web3 gaming, Axie Infinity. Living in a fantasy world where none of this seems to have happened, Square Enix definitely thinks it’s a good idea to throw a lot of money down this hole while selling studios like Eidos and Crystal Dynamics that have made actual video games.

Good luck, Matsuda, you’re going to need it.

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