Ubisoft and Square Enix, their quest for success in the blockchain

Nowadays, companies need to diversify their approaches to get the consumer’s time and attention and this goes for the financial services companies also. A new concept has been introduced to keep that consumer attention which is called gamification which is leveraging specific gameplay principles like designing elements and making it accessible to everyone. Financial institutions are keeping an eye on it and through it moving to the Fintech sector. 

On another side gaming has for a long time been considered as not serious and just a branch of entertainment however the recent global pandemic has pushed it to the highest it has ever been and it weighs heavy now. 

That industry has grown so rapidly from $55.8 Bn in 2012 to an impressive $152.1Bn in 2019, a CAGR of 15,4% and now in 2020 $174.9Bn -  $60.4 Bn for the USA only. This represents  growth of 37% just in 2020.

Newzoo even predicts a net worth of $217.98 Bn in 2023. 

Safe to say that gaming is a sector to invest too but so is the blockchain. 

Blockchain is the technology behind the cryptocurrency called bitcoin and like the gaming sector it has been growing although exponentially in the last year from 1 BTC worth $4k to $50k recently. 

Because of this evolution, that cryptocurrency is now worth more than $1 trillion making its  founder, Satoshi Nakamoto worth $40 billion. 

Nevertheless, he is not the only one that saw the future in bitcoin and blockchain technology Forbes made a list of all the richest investors of Bitcoin and they’re all minimum have a net worth of $1Bn. 

Video games and crypto markets are starting to converge. As gaming companies see the huge flow of  money move into crypto it has caught the attention of the gaming industry who are now exploring how to use crypto to enhance the gaming experience.

We are already seeing gaming companies buying up the largest crypto exchanges in the hopes to merge the crypto finance world with ingame economies moving in-game items and ingame money on the blockchain. This has been seen previously in Animal Crossing: New Horizons where players can design many things and one of the players decided to re-create his WeChat Pay and AliPay QR codes in the game on tiles allowing people in the real world to send him real dollars for digital items. 

Source : https://twitter.com/ZhugeEX/status/1244356497032777734?s=20 

Players are showing an interest in merging gaming with the blockchain and big companies have noticed it. This brings us to Ubisoft’s crazy bet with its  Hashcraft project. A real titanic work although really interesting and exciting; with Hashcraft players contribute to expanding the world, creating their own island and hiding their own treasures. Ubisoft expects to make each game a node to the blockchain making everyone’s world sharable - making the “game” endlessly creative. Then, perhaps exchanging in game earnings into the real-world money such as BTC would be possible. 

The possibilities of crypto markets and video game economies are only just starting to flourish.

Ubisoft is not the only one obviously to have noticed the rise of crypto and this technology called blockchain. Yosuke Matsuda, the president of Square Enix - famous creator of Tomb Raider! said that he was very interested to see the potential application the blockchain would bring to the digital content world. 

Ubisoft is still at an early stage of their research and development process, currently exploring possibilities, so it is hard to say when such an integration could roll out into the market. 

Still, the fusion between gaming and blockchain, two vibrant worlds, opens up enormous possibilities and the creation of a unique stimulating ecosystem.

Nicolas Gilot, CEO of Ultra: the next generation PC Game distribution platform powered by Blockchain is also very intrigued by the blockchain gaming future. On Decrypt, he said that the technology is “already proving its potential beyond the ownership of in-game items and providing groundbreaking, innovative solutions” and added that “looking at the future of gaming, in three to five years time, I believe the industry will be completely unrecognizable to where we are now by virtue of the incorporation of blockchain.”

With that in mind, it may be worth considering the overall value of crypto and the blockchain for the future, not only in the gaming industry but also in several other industries. 

The crypto world is here to stay, and brings immense investment opportunities, not only for traders but also for the platforms that make it possible for people to trade. 

A good example comes from South Korea, where the gaming giant Nexon is the owner of two of the world's largest crypto exchanges, Bitstamp and Korbit (and may be moving to another acquisition).

• How to merge it? 

As mentioned above, the possibility of the gaming industry bringing in crypto assets and making it possible for players to trade these assets within the games and into the real world. For this to be possible, the industry needs to rely on crypto exchanges, which should raise interest for this type of businesses in the near future, making it a great opportunity for anyone looking for an investment.

There are some companies that already offer tools to do so in an open source way. Creating your own exchange as easy as a few clicks - incredible.