Square Enix wants to invest more in ‘blockchain and AI’ after Tomb Raider sale

Square Enix wants to invest more in areas such as blockchain, artificial intelligence and cloud. The Japanese game publisher announces this with the proposed sale of the Tomb Raider studios and rights to Embracer.

Square Enix sells three of its foreign studios to Embracer. The company says it will do this as this will help in ‘adapting to the changes that are happening in the business world worldwide’. The Japanese publisher believes it will make sales more efficient and increase business value by ‘accelerating core business growth’.

In the same document, Square Enix writes that the sale will also allow for new investments in areas such as blockchain, AI and cloud. It is not specified exactly what the company wants to do with it. Presumably it concerns implementations in games.

The top of Square Enix has often spoken positively about blockchain implementations in games. Last month, the company’s CEO said he wanted to compensate gamers via blockchain for content they create in games. At the beginning of this year, he said in an open letter that he was very positive about NFTs and blockchains. According to the CEO, NFTs have been received ‘very enthusiastically’ by a ‘fast-growing group of users’.

The statements of the Square Enix CEO were remarkable, because many traditional gamers criticize the implementation of NFTs. Stalker 2 developer GSC Game World scrapped its NFT plans after continued criticism. The NFTs that Ubisoft implemented in Ghost Recon Breakpoint turned out to be barely traded.