In April 2021, on the top of Internet 3 Mania, Sega was one of many largest corporations to pledge its future to the rip-off that was “play to earn”. Now, simply two years later and after the ass has fully 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 it will likely be entering into the NFT enterprise, partnering with (and shopping for a stake in) an organization known as Double Leap 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 experiences, Sega hopes this “would be the begin of a sequential enlargement into quite a lot of content material, together with IPs at present in growth and new IPs to be launched sooner or later.”
These plans at the moment are largely accomplished 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 initiatives to keep away from devaluing its content material”, and also will be “shelving plans to develop its personal video games in that style not less than for now”.
“We’re trying into whether or not this expertise is basically going to take off on this business, in any case”, Utsumi advised 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 finest 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.
