So you know why the game was called Final Fantasy right? Back in the 80s, the powers that be at Square had finally had enough of the game industry and decided to do one last game for the road. Naturally, what they came up with when not worrying about the future turned out to be the origin of one of the most successful franchises of all time. Nowadays, the future of the Final Fantasy franchise and Square Enix in general may be in danger, but this time from a rather surprising place.
NFT’s. So hot right now, as much with the people who think they can profit from them as with the people who know that they will profit by relentlessly shitting on them, as with big businesses that have attempted to get in on it in the hope to make a few quick bucks before the bottom falls out. It’s in this market that Square Enix decided that they would take a huge gamble and sold $300 million dollars’ worth of their valuables to pursue what they call an aggressive push into blockchain technology.
Now they didn’t actually sell the Final Fantasy franchise, that would be bordering on insanity not seen since Tetsuya Nomura saw a zipper for the first time; but they did get rid of solid performer like Tomb Raider, and franchises that could be more effectively leverages such as Deus Ex. All of it in a push towards blockchain technologies, whatever that means for the normal folk who are not at all interested in knowing what a blockchain is and how a picture that can be infinitely copied and pasted somehow has value because you have a receipt that says you own the original copy (nonsensical statement completely intended).
Whether this is ludicrous or the growing steps of an emerging universe of marketable goods is best left for the economists and the people who want to piss off one or other side for profit and fun. As far as I am concerned, I am just looking at it much in the same way I look at the commodities trade. I will tell you this. On may the third, the Wall Street Journal published a piece highlighting that the NFT market has cooled down considerably from its heyday. Trades are down 92%, bitcoin is down 43% and people are already running around in circles saying that this is the end. Whether it is or it isn’t, at the very least the trend may make Square Enix clutch at their receipt, because the market they are entering now likely bears no resemblance to the one that they thought they were getting in.
Usually, when markets collapse, the people that came in last are the ones that are hurt the most, while the people who came in first are generally savvy enough to take all of the money they can and bolt out just as it’s all coming down. It’s just that generally is just poor, deluded John and Jane Schmuck that sell their valuables to invest on something that will in all likelihood blow up on their faces, not a multi-billion dollar company.
