SEGA’s question is valid: what’s the point of these games if they’re not fun?

About a year and a half ago, we heard that SEGA management didn’t want to get involved with NFTs and blockchain right away (while Square Enix jumped on the bandwagon at the first opportunity) if it seemed like a simple money-making venture. In a Q&A with investors in early 2022, they took this position: “In terms of NFT, we would like to try out various experiments, and we have already started many different studies and considerations, but nothing is decided regarding P2E.

There have been many announcements about it already, including overseas, but some users show adverse reactions now. We need to carefully assess many things, such as how we can mitigate the harmful elements, how much we can introduce this within the Japanese regulation, what will be accepted, and what will not be by the users. Then, we will consider this further if this leads to our mission “Constantly Creating, Forever Captivating,” but if it is perceived as simple money-making, we would like to decide not to proceed,” SEGA said.

Three months later, the company was much more positive. A patent/logo was trademarked in Japan. Masayoshi Kikuchi (Yakuza, Binary Domain producer) said in an interview, “Gaming has a history of expansion through the connection of various cultures and technologies. For example, social networking and game video viewing are recent examples. It is a natural extension for the future of gaming that it will expand to involve new areas such as cloud gaming and NFTs. We are also developing SuperGame from the perspective of how far different games can be connected to each other.”

Compared to these comments, SEGA co-COO Shuji Utsumi’s statement to Bloomberg is a complete contrast! “The action in play-to-earn games is boring. What’s the point if games are no fun? We’re looking into whether this technology will take off in this industry after all. For most people in the video game industry, what blockchain advocates say may sound a bit extreme, but that’s how the first penguin has always been. We should never underestimate them,” Utsumi said.

A 180-degree turn.

Source: WCCFTech