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In a New Year’s message, Sq. Enix’s CEO Yosuke Matsuda reaffirmed the corporate’s concentrate on blockchain expertise with “a number of blockchain video games based mostly on unique IPs underneath growth” regardless of the general public backlash towards the initiative. This echoes Matsuda’s New Year’s message from final January, the place the corporate first expressed its enthusiasm for an NFT-fueled, metaverse future. Extra lately, Squeenix partnered with the “environmentally pleasant” blockchain agency Oasys, in all probability to sidestep potential controversies about, y’know, the environmental impact of the technology.
Matsuda addressed a few of the public pushback in his letter, claiming that new tech normally receives preliminary backlash earlier than changing into broadly accepted. “New applied sciences and frameworks result in innovation, however in addition they create appreciable confusion,” he wrote. “Having ridden out such societal tides, some such applied sciences and frameworks step by step develop into a part of individuals’s lives, finally giving rise to new companies and development.”
Nonetheless, Matsuda did admit that “The market was pushed extra by speculative traders than by players” at this level. Though, he did level to “a number of blockchain gaming occasions held abroad” that “produced extra energetic dialogue than ever earlier than about what makes the video games thrilling and what their person group seems like.” Sq. hasn’t made issues much less complicated, as we nonetheless do not know the way this tech may really enhance video games.
Blockchain is clearly on the firm’s forefront. After promoting a handful of their western studios and IP for $300 million, together with Tomb Raider and Deus Ex, Squeenix talked about that they’d be capable to use the extra money to launch “new companies by transferring ahead with investments in fields together with blockchain, AI, and the cloud.”
Elsewhere in Sq.’s kingdom, a handful of live-service video games are quietly shutting down. The Last Fantasy 7 battle-royale spin-off, The First Soldier, ends providers on January eleventh, adopted by Bravely Default: Sensible Lights on February twenty eighth. This follows from kart racer Chocobo GP which stopped receiving assist in December 2022, 9 months after its launch.
It’s not all unhealthy information for Sq. followers, as Last Fantasy producer Yoshinori Kitase teased followers with “one other large announcement unrelated to FFVII” in a special New Years’ letter. Many followers have speculated that Kitase may very well be referring to a Last Fantasy 9 remake, based mostly on the prophetic Nvidia leaks. Personally, Last Fantasy 9 is ideal as it’s, so I’ve my fingers crossed for a brand new mission. I’ll in all probability simply replay FF9 anyway.
No matter any recreation shutterings, blockchain controversy, or basic remakes, Sq. Enix is poised to have a reasonably good 2023. Their magic-flinging parkour recreation Forspoken releases in just a few weeks on January twenty fourth. On June twenty second, Sq.’s largest sequence returns with Final Fantasy 16 – presently a timed unique for PS5. Then the subsequent a part of their FF7 saga continues with Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth subsequent winter, additionally debuting as a timed unique for PS5.
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