Square Enix President and NieR: Automata optional boss Yosuke Matsuda revealed the company's big plans for NFTs and the metaverse.

In a New Year's open letter, Matsuda bared Square Enix's medium-term business strategies involving NFTs. He admits that most gamers, what he calls “play-to-have-fun” players, aren't exactly thrilled by NFTs and metaverses. However, he also concluded that NFTs and metaverses aren't exactly for them. Instead, he says that advancements in these fields will lead to more incentives for “play-to-contribute” gamers, who he claims have had little to no tangible incentive to create and contribute apart from personal feelings or self-expression. Throughout the letter, Matsuda described in brief what Square Enix plans to do within this space. Matsuda shows a lot of confidence and optimism towards NFTs, metaverses, cryptocurrencies, and blockchain technology.

Fans who have been keeping tabs on Square Enix's business shouldn't be surprised. As stated in the letter, the company started diversifying into this field as early as March 2021. They even communicated this with the community through similar updates way back in May. However, back then, public reception of the technology has been indifferent at worst. Things have changed over the past year, and fans have become less receptive to applications of NFT in gaming. It's surprising that Square Enix is sticking to their guns even after fans have heavily criticized Ubisoft's implementation of NFTs in Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Breakpoint. That's probably less surprising if we know that they're more focused on following the trends set by Facebook/Meta than by fans' opinions on the technology.

Don't get us wrong. We've covered NFT games to some degree here at ClutchPoints and believe that blockchain technology has interesting use cases. However, one cannot wonder how companies such as Ubisoft and Square Enix continuously ignore the overwhelmingly negative reception of fans towards the technology. It's as if they don't consider any nay-sayers' opinions from being valid simply because “they're not the target market.” Hopefully, whatever Square Enix has in mind does end up benefiting players.

One good thing about this is the transparency, though. Square Enix definitely cares about what their community thinks – for better or for worse. They wouldn't have made this letter otherwise. But whether or not they're using this as an opportunity to genuinely communicate or as an opportunity to test the waters before putting a foot on the door is an entirely different matter. The negative reception so far has not caused any movement to reverse these statements, so Square Enix may definitely move forward with this plan either way. Splitting their audience into two: “play-to-have-fun” players and “play-to-contribute” players already says a lot. They'd probably take all negative responses as coming from the “play-to-have-fun” crowd, which NFTs and metaverses aren't for, and are therefore irrelevant opinions.