In short
- Square Enix has taken a very measured approach to NFTs and joined Enjin in releasing Final Fantasy NFTs.
- The NFTs based on Polkadot will be available in 2023 with physical toys and trading cards.
The award will be presented to one of the most popular video games ever made. NFT Treatment in 2023: Square Enix, a Japanese publisher, has partnered Enjin, a blockchain gaming company, to launch NFTs based upon the Final Fantasy franchise.
The NFTs won’t be purely digital products, however. They’re tied to physical action figures and trading cards based on the smash role-playing game (RPG) Final Fantasy VII to commemorate the original PlayStation game’s 25th anniversary.
Square Enix will release six packs of physical trading card packs in spring 2023. They will retail for $4 each. Each card comes with a code that can be used to redeem one NFT trading card created by Enjin via its Efinity platform. Polkadot blockchain.
In November 2023, the publisher will release a limited edition action figure of the game’s star, Cloud Strife. Both the standard figure and “Digital Plus Edition” will come with a code to redeem an NFT certificate of authenticity, but only the latter comes with an additional NFT: a digital replica of the physical toy. The Digital Plus Edition will cost $160 while the standard figure is priced at $130.
The Efinity blockchain runs on Polkadot as a parachain, or a dedicated subnet of sorts, that’s part of the overall Polkadot ecosystem. Polkadot is a proof-of stake consensus model, which does not require energy intensive mining like the NFT platform. Ethereum.
Enjin CTO Witek Radomski told Decrypt Square Enix was the first company to work with Square Enix many years ago. Square Enix hosts websites that allow online guilds to play Final Fantasy XIV.
Square Enix is seeing a growing interest in blockchain technology and NFTs, which has led to this partnership. Final Fantasy—which has sold 168 million games worldwide since 1987, per the company—is its crown jewel.
“They were looking at all kinds of blockchains, testing them out,” said Radomski. He added that Square Enix sought a platform that could “meet the needs of gamers,” including considerations like low transaction costs and energy efficiency.
An NFT, a blockchain token, is used to prove ownership of an item. It can be digital or physical. NFTs are used often for digital artwork, profile images, collectibles and interactive videogame items. surged to $25 billion worth of trading volume in 2021 alone.
Square Enix has increased its NFTs and blockchain efforts over the past few years. It In the Ethereum-based metaverse gaming game, invested The Sandbox will open in 2020. Plans were announced earlier in the year. bring its Dungeon Siege franchise Welcome to the NFT-powered world of gaming.
NFT collectibles from Japan were also released last year by the firm. These NFT collectibles were based on the Million Arthur game series. LINE blockchain platform. Square Enix president earlier this year The potential benefits were praised by the author. of NFTs and tokenized economies, noting interest in “play-to-contribute” experiences in which players benefit financially from a game’s growing success.
Square Enix has sold off a number of franchises (including Tomb Raider), and three of its games studios. $300 MillionIn part, to finance its growing crypto-industry endeavors. Square Enix was just announced yesterday. Zebedee is a Bitcoin gaming startup.The company raised $35 million in Series B funding.
Radomski said that Square Enix has been “very measured” in its approach to the NFT initiative with Enjin, seeking to streamline the process for gamers who may be encountering NFTs for the first time. “That lets us adapt our products even more,” he told Decrypt. “It’s been amazing.”
Enjin’s evolution
Enjin has also partnered Microsoft And SamsungThe Ethereum ecosystem is its most prominent work. Enjin Coin (ENJ) is an ERC-20 token, and Radomski authored Ethereum’s ERC-1155 multi-token NFT standard. But the firm gradually saw that Ethereum’s low transaction throughput and surging fees would limit game developers.
“Back in 2018, I realized that Ethereum was going to have some limits at some point, even though the fees back then were like a penny,” he said. “We can’t run millions of transactions. We can’t run thousands of games on Ethereum because it’ll just be too much.”
Radomski said that Enjin explored the potential of scaling solutions that could be ideal for gaming and collectibles, but ultimately decided that it didn’t want to build something from scratch. Instead, the team opted to build Efinity on Polkadot, which he said was alluring as a “framework for blockchains” that lets builders customize as they see fit.
“Everything that we’re launching now [on Efinity] is like a gen-two of everything we’ve built,” he explained.
Radomski also stated that Enjin was changing its operating model. Instead of a software-as-a-service (SaaS) style model in which Enjin hosts content in partnership with game developers, the firm is letting creators use the open Efinity platform to deploy their own infrastructure and build NFT-powered games.
“That’s been the dream for the last five years,” he said, “and now it’s finally coming out.”
Efinity currently lives on a Polkadot parchain. Enjin plans, however, to expand cross-chain functionality to bridge to other blockchains. Bridging to Ethereum is on the horizon, Radomski said—so these Final Fantasy NFTs could be transferable to Ethereum by the time they launch. There may be other blockchains that support Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM).
NFT gaming growth
Radomski thinks it’s only beneficial for NFT gaming to see major publishers like Square Enix and Ubisoft plays in the space. These Final Fantasy NFTs aren’t designed to be used within any game, but Square Enix has Previously indicated interest NFT-powered games that use tokenized economies.
Such publishers are building on the backs of indie creators that have experimented with blockchain technology in recent years for NFT-powered games, sometimes with enormous success—as in the case of the Ethereum-powered play-to-earn game, Axie Infinity.
NFTs are also available. Attracted the ire vocal gamersThis is partly due to scams and speculation, but also because of the negative environmental impact of certain platforms. NFT-powered games tend to be more focused on earning tokens than they are having fun. This is a problem for some gamers. That’s a perception that veteran game developers can potentially help shift.
“Gamers have to be shown that developers want to use these things responsibly in interesting ways to enhance gameplay,” Radomski said, “not just as a monetization mechanism.”
Enjin has been in conversations with “various AAA,” or major, publishers of late, he added. Such studios not only have experience building polished games for the masses, but they’re also well capitalized. They don’t need to sell NFTs simply to fund game development. This could lead to more games that use blockchain tech to create new experiences.
“It’s going to take another year or two to see more of these games coming out that use NFTs in interesting ways,” he said. “But it’s happening—people are thinking about this. The AAA is my opinion [publishers] they will be innovative. They have the budget to actually be able to explore these interesting new concepts for NFTs.”
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