According to Michsuzuki and spotted and translated by our friends at VGC, Square Enix’s CEO Yosuke Matsuda confirmed at the company’s recent Shareholders’ Meeting that it was “too early to make Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy blockchain games”, emphasising that he was “not thinking about that” for upcoming releases. VGC also purports that the company is keen to create “story-focused” NFTs, too. The comments follow a controversial New Year’s letter in which Matsuda expressed hope that NFTs and blockchain technology will become a “major trend” in gaming, stating that he believes they will be major areas of growth for the industry in 2022, including cloud gaming, AI, and blockchain games. The latter “are built upon the premise of a token economy and therefore hold the potential to enable self-sustaining game growth,” Matsuda said at the time. He doubled down on the statement in April, saying: “We want to utilise the power of these people to create games that will continue to evolve”. ICYMI, the first trailer for Final Fantasy 16 introduced lead characters Clive and Joshua, as well as a cute dog. Now, Naoki Yoshida has confirmed that the dog is named Torgal and he may even be a party member. “Well, let’s just say he’s more wolf than dog - and his name is ‘Torgal’,” Yoshida teased. “As for him being a party member, you’ll just have to wait and see. We’ll have more info on parties soon.” Yoshida has also confirmed that Clive will be joined by AI-driven party members in combat and the game won’t be open world. He also recently confirmed that the recent trailer for the game was delayed due to the war in Ukraine.
