In April 2021, on the peak of Internet 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 Desires To Promote NFTs, Can Fuck Proper Off’:
Sega Japan introduced earlier at this time that will probably be stepping into the NFT enterprise, partnering with (and shopping for a stake in) an organization referred to as Double Soar Tokyo, with plans to not solely promote character-related tokens, however NFTs in future video games as nicely.
The announcement is skinny on particulars, however as Pocket Gamer experiences, Sega hopes this “would be the begin of a sequential enlargement into a wide range of content material, together with IPs at the moment in improvement and new IPs to be launched sooner or later.”
These plans are actually principally 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 no less than for now”.
“We’re wanting 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 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.