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Square Enix has announced a playable “NFT collectible art experience”
Square Enix has announced a “new franchise” built around NFTs.
Symbiogenesis is described by the company as its “first digital collectibles project designed from the ground up for Web3 fans”.
According to Square Enix, Symbiogenesis is set in a self-contained world where “a wide variety of character symbiosis, all of which can be collected as digital art”.
It promises to offer “an interactive story and a dedicated community”.
The “art” collected by players can be used “as a character in a story set in an alternate world where the player can “solve” a mystery by completing quests that revolve around issues of monopolization and distribution of resources.
It can also be used as a profile picture on social media.
Square Enix says sales of the Symbiogenesis NFTs will begin in spring 2023, along with a “free browsing service”.
During the company’s 2022 shareholder meeting report in June, Square Enix shared its plans to create “story-focused” NFTs.
As revealed in the report, the company’s medium-term goals include “developing blockchain games and entertainment products”.
But when discussing how blockchain would affect the company’s biggest franchises, Square Enix president Yosuke Matsuda said, “It’s still too early to consider making Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy blockchain games.”
Square Enix was one of the first major publishers to declare support for NFT. In a New Year’s letter published during the holiday break last year, Matsuda committed to making blockchain and NFT games part of Square Enix’s gaming portfolio.
The publisher has also started selling action figures that come with digital NFTs. A Cloud Strife figure, due out this month, costs $129.99, but there’s also a “Digital Plus Edition” that costs $159.99.
The Digital Plus Edition is exclusive to the Square Enix Store and includes “trading tickets to redeem a digital certificate of authenticity and a digital version of the figure that can be enjoyed on PC or smartphone”.
In the item description, Square Enix confirms: “Both digital certificate of authenticity and digital version of the figure are managed by the blockchain technology known as NFTs.”
However, it also warns that NFT could become unusable in the future if the NFT platform Enjin – which handles the distribution of the ‘digital numbers’ – shuts down its service.
