Hello HODLers and Gamers,
PlayToEarn has converted many cryptocurrency skeptics to our Crypto world as they undestood the value potential and financial freedom you could derive from blockchain technology.
Most of these new gamers came from emerging economies such as Philippines, Venezuela or Nigeria in order to make a living while playing and building their own financial assets in the form of gaming NFTs or game ressources.
What we are now witnessing is that gaming giants are finally waking up to this new reality. At least one of them: Ubisoft.
The French gaming developer has been one of the pioneer to follow the dynamic blockchain gaming space. Since 2018, it invested through its Strategic Innovation Lab, and is a founding member of the Blockchain Gaming Alliance. Ubisoft made partnerships with what were emerging blockchain gaming projects a few years back; namely:
- @Splinterlands
- Axie Infinity
- Sorare
...
It does not seem any of them was strongly financial but it just shows that Ubisoft took this evolution of gaming very seriously, from the start.
As it is shown by a quote from Frederick Duguet, Ubisoft's CFO during the last quaterly earnings:
"We consider blockchain one of those revolutions. It will imply more play-to-earn that will enable more players to actually earn content, own content, and we think it's going to grow the industry quite a lot."
Google Trends for "Play to Earn"
I guess we are having record searches, most search requeever...
It is still very unclear what it means. Will Ubisoft make some NFTs in his current AAA or use its recent investments to develop Blockchain games and see where the regulator stands concerning NFTs?
It could be the case as they just recently invested in Animoca Brands which raised $65M at $2.2B valuation from Ubisoft and other VCs. They are invested in most blockchain gaming projects (NBA topshots, Axie Infinity, The Sandbox...).
In any case, this strategy goes against what Valve just did with Steam as they have just banned all NFT and blockchain games from its platform.
What will happen to smaller games once the Call of Duty, WoW or Assassin's Creed jump in?
Well, we still have some time to improve gameplay, tokenomics and community before it happens :D.
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