Square Enix confirms that blockchain gaming is a priority

In a New Year’s letter from the president, the company has confirmed that it is “mostly focused” on blockchain entertainment.

This is certainly big news considering how many gaming companies and players currently hate NFTs.

“In terms of new business domains, we have named three focus investment fields under our medium-term business plan.

Among these, we are most focused on blockchain entertainment, to which we have devoted aggressive investment and business development efforts.

Looking externally, I think it’s fair to say that blockchain gained significant recognition as a field in 2022, as evidenced by “Web 3.0” becoming a well-established buzzword among business people.“

This is the opposite of what we’ve heard from Minecraft, Steam and more.

“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.

Several blockchain gaming events held overseas have recently created more active discussion than ever before about what makes the games exciting and what their user community looks like.

The market was driven more by speculative investors than by players throughout 2021.

In other words, the content that was at the forefront was created based on the premise that blockchain and NFTs should result in revenue generation.

However, in the wake of the aforementioned turbulence in the cryptocurrency industry, there is now a trend to see blockchain technology as just a means to an end and discuss what needs to happen to achieve the end of delivering new experiences and excitement to customers.

I see this as a very favorable development for the industry’s future growth.

Our group has several blockchain games based on original IPs in development, some of which we announced last year, and we are making preparations that will enable us to unveil even more titles this year.

We are also engaged in global sourcing from an investment perspective and will continue to take stakes in promising businesses whether we find them in Japan or abroad.

Blockchain has been a subject of excitement and a source of unease, but with that in the rearview mirror, we hope that blockchain gaming will move into a new stage of growth in 2023.“

Is Enjin making a comeback with Square Enix and Final Fantasy?

We previously covered Enjin’s partnership announcement with Square Enix.

But overall, Enjin has been very slow to release Enjin Wallet 2.0, NFT.io, Efinity and many other solutions that seem to be endlessly evolving.

It is natural that Square Enix would go all in on Enjin, based on this New Year’s letter from the president.

Here’s Enjin summarizing the partnership news from summer 2022: