Square Enix has been one of the most bullish of the major publishers in announcing their intention to seriously invest in blockchain technology. At the start of the year, president Yosuka Matsuda said the company intends to do so “increasing our efforts to develop a business accordingly, with an eye towards potentially issuing our own tokens in the future.”
What exactly that might mean remains to be seen, though one unexpected result was Square Enix selling its Western studios and series like Deus Ex and Tomb Raider to the Embracer group for around 300 million dollars. A good portion of this money was earmarked for Square Enix’s crypto projects, and when discussing last year’s financial results, they continued banging the drum for blockchainNFTs and other things that work at night.
Now Square Enix will become part of a blockchain. It will be one of 21 ‘node validators’ of the Oasys blockchain, which like them all claim to be environmentally friendly and not like all the other blockchains. A node validator is a device that maintains a copy of a given blockchain, and has a role in verifying and keeping track of all the transactions. So far, no word on what the Gallagher brothers think of the name.
The Oasis Project has some serious Japanese talent behind it, including Hajime Nakatani (president and CEO of Bandai Namco’s research division), and Shuji Utsumi (founder at Playstation, co-founder of Q Entertainment and current co-COO of Sega), and it has secured commitments from several major publishers, including unsurprisingly Bandai Namco and Sega, as well as the crypto-fanciers at Ubisoft.
Yosuke Saito, the director of Square Enix’s Blockchain Entertainment Division, said:
“Our shared enthusiasm for Web3 gaming makes this an exciting partnership for us, and we look forward to gaining insights that can advance the creation of brand new gaming experiences for players around the world.”
Most worrying for the player in the street will be this line from the press release: “As part of this initiative, Square Enix and Oasys will explore the possibility of leveraging user contributions in the development of new games on the Oasys blockchain.”
Well, we all had a good run. Oasys does not yet have a firm launch date, but it is expected to happen later this year. Then I guess we get our first glimpse of what happens when Final Fantasy fans get the opportunity to buy “one-of-a-kind” moogles.
