In April 2021, on the top of Net 3 Mania, Sega was one of many largest firms to pledge its future to the rip-off that was “play to earn”. Now, simply two years later and after the ass has utterly fallen out of that market, Sega has had a change of coronary heart.
As we wrote on the time, in a narrative with the headline ‘Sega Needs To Promote NFTs, Can Fuck Proper Off’:
Sega Japan introduced earlier in the present day that will probably be stepping into the NFT enterprise, partnering with (and shopping for a stake in) an organization known as Double Soar Tokyo, with plans to not solely promote character-related tokens, however NFTs in future video games as properly.
The announcement is skinny on particulars, however as Pocket Gamer reviews, Sega hopes this “would be the begin of a sequential growth into quite a lot of content material, together with IPs presently in growth and new IPs to be launched sooner or later.”
These plans are actually largely finished for. In an interview with Bloomberg, Sega’s co-Chief Working Officer Shuji Utsumi has mentioned the corporate will now “withhold its largest franchises from third-party blockchain gaming tasks to keep away from devaluing its content material”, and also will be “shelving plans to develop its personal video games in that style a minimum of for now”.
“We’re wanting into whether or not this know-how is de facto going to take off on this business, in any case”, Utsumi instructed the location, including that whereas its “largest franchises” are off the desk, “lesser recognized” properties like Three Kingdoms and Virtua Fighter will nonetheless be seeing some NFT tie-ins, albeit from third-party suppliers.
His greatest quote, nonetheless, is the place he bluntly says “The motion in play-to-earn video games is boring. What’s the purpose if video games aren’t any enjoyable?” My man, we had been telling you that in 2021, glad you lastly got here round.
