Square Enix wants to increasingly rely on NFTs, blockchain and the metaverse in the future

Classic games like Forspoken are no longer the only focus of Square.

New Year’s speeches and letters are usually intended to review the past year, draw lessons and give us a positive view of the next twelve months. It is doubtful whether Yosuke Matsuda, President of Square Enix, succeeded.

There is hardly any mention of traditional video games in his New Year’s greeting. Instead, it’s about NFTs, Blockchain Games, XR and the Metaverse. Other publishers have already had to find out how little the respective communities can get excited about such concepts.

Square Enix aims to develop new business models in 2022

Square Enix actually stands for great titles, especially in the role-playing game genre. That is missing from Final Fantasy 16 or Forspoken, the publisher’s next big highlights New year letter but every trace. The topics are much more abstract:

The metaverse: Matsuda sees the renaming of Facebook to Meta as a sign that the Metaverse is not just a catchphrase, but a valid business model. But what exactly is meant by that? First and foremost, it is about the connection of different services and technologies. In the letter, 5G, the cloud, AI, the blockchain and XR (Extended Reality – i.e. VR, AR, etc.) are named as investment opportunities. Matsuda also hopes the Metaverse will have an impact on the gaming industry as well.

NFTs: Matsuda describes 2022 as “NFTs: Year One”. It’s slated to be the year the technology breaks through and becomes profitable for publishers like Square Enix. Despite some negative examples (such as the speculative trade in NFTs regardless of the value of the goods), he believes that NFTs will establish themselves in society in the coming years and be equated with physical goods. According to his own statements, it is important to him that the value of the NFT goods corresponds to their “true” value.

You can find out more about NFTs and what they mean for gamers or the environment, for example, using Ubisoft Quartz as an example:

Blockchain Games: According to Square, game development should no longer be a one-way street. So far, studios have been producing games that we were able to play afterwards. However, the publisher wants active players who want to participate in the process. The NFTs also play a role here, because they actually allow us to make money in games. This should allow titles to grow by themselves. Matsuda calls this “decentralized gaming”.

So far, games are only aimed at people who want to have fun. But Matsuda believes that there are people who want to contribute to make games more exciting. Mods for PC games could be meant here. So far, however, these people have had no additional motivation to create, except for “such inconsistent personal feelings as goodwill and a sense of voluntariness”.

With Final Fantasy 16, Square continues to rely on classic concepts – still:

4:02

Final Fantasy 16 – Next installment in the RPG series announced

Further current news on the topic:

How are fans responding to Square Enix’s announcements?

As mentioned at the beginning, it has so far not been well received when a publisher or developer studio wanted to integrate NFTs into their games. In the case of Stalker 2: Heart of Chernobyl, those responsible even had to discard their plans to stop the shitstorm.

Matsuda’s assessment of the situation is all the more astonishing. According to him, NFTs have been “accepted with an unmistakable enthusiasm”, but he at least speaks about “concerns” of the gamers who are just out for fun. On too Reddit Many users have made negative comments about the New Year’s letter. One user called the news “depressing”, while another complained that gamers should now take over the work of the development team instead of playing for fun.

What do you think of what the Square Enix president said?