Limitbreak raises $200M to revolutionise Free-to-Own Model, Gaming is only the Metaverse's 1st Use Case & Mobile Gaming Behind Microsoft's $68.7b deal
Big News
Limitbreak raises $200M to revolutionise Free-to-Own as a Blockchain Gaming Model
Mobile gaming firm Limitbreak gained a lot of traction this week after announcing their $200M raise and selling out their DigiDaigaku NFT collection.
CEO Gabriel Leydon left Machine Zone in 2018, the team behind freemium mobile MMO ‘Game of War: Fire Age’, one of the top grossing apps in 2015 and 2015.In August 2021, him and co-founder Halbert Nakagawa got together to create a game with a new blockchain-based business model: free-to-own.
They are not the first to have thought of “free-to-own” as an NFT game model, Skyweaver for instance has long been allowing players to play competitively with non-NFT assets as well as earning NFT assets free-of-charge and without setting up a crypto wallet.
“Our focus is on a what I believe is going to replace ‘free to play’ with something I call ‘free to own’ games” Leydon said in an interview.
That’s a big statement, as free-to-play has become the dominant business model in games, generating $120 billion in annual revenues, or more than half of all game revenues. Pioneered in Asia with online PC games, free-to-play caught on worldwide with social and mobile games, and it expanded the reach of gaming tenfold to billions of people.
– Official Press Release in GamesBeat
Check out the official press release here and Leydon’s Twitter here.
Little News
Mobile Gaming was Microsoft’s #1 Motivation behind their $68.7b buyout offer for Activision-Blizzard
Activision-Blizzard has generated more revenue in mobile games than consoles and PCs combined.
King’s Candy Crush makes $2 billion+ a year.
Activision’s Call of Duty Mobile has made $1.5 billion.
Blizzard’s Diablo Immortal has made over $100 million in its first months.
"When we were thinking about what we are capable of today and where we need to go – the biggest gaming platform on the planet is mobile phones. 1.5 billion people play on mobile phones and regretfully Microsoft does not have a native gaming platform there" explained Xbox Head Phil Spencer.
BREAKING TODAY:
The UK competition regulatory (CMA) has referred Microsoft’s proposed acquisition of Activision-Blizzard, – the biggest deal the gaming industry would have ever seen –, for “in-depth investigation”.
There are concerns over Xbox dominating the market: “Microsoft could leverage A-B’s games together with their strength across console, cloud, and PC operating systems to damage competition in the nascent market for cloud gaming services.”
Phil Spencer published a blog post in defence of the buyout offer titled ‘Gaming for everyone, everywhere: our view on the Activision Blizzard acquisition’.
Gaming is only the Metaverse’s 1st Iteration
In the 1950s, early computer scientists began using games to test the limits and potentials of their programs. Gaming provides a way to test the limits of different technologies without them having any real-life consequences or implications beyond the game state.
In the 2020s, it seems like the same will happen with metaverse tooling – games will pave the way for other use cases.
NVIDIA’s CEO Jensen Huang is going beyond gaming for the metaverse.
One of his longterm projects includes building Earth 2, a digital twin of our planet that, – with enough supercomputing simulation capability within the Omniverse –, could enable scientists to predict climate change for our planet.
NVIDIA Omniverse is described on their website as “an easily extensible platform for 3D design collaboration and scalable multi-GPU, real-time, true-to-reality simulation” which will usher in a “new era of 3D design collaboration and world simulation”.
Worldwide Webb introduces their Integrations Tool
Players are free to test and view their own Sprites (= images that represent game assets) using the tool available here to submit them for integration.
“This new tool will heavily increase the 1M+ NFTs integrated in-game”, Worldwide Webb continues to lead the way when it comes to avatar interoperability.
Weekly Finds
NFT Gamers Lounge
Streams showcasing Web3 games – latest gameplay includes Phantom Galaxies, Big Time and MetaOps.
Vibrant community of game builders and gamers which connects on Discords and Twitter Spaces hosted every Wednesday.
‘How to Make On-Chain Gaming Competitive: ‘Session Keys’ Pt. I’
Article – Mirror
Published by Matchbox DAO, a collective of developers, artists and designers building the infrastructure of on-chain games with StarkNet.
The series will “cover different topics around how developers are shaping on-chain games to become more intuitive and entertaining for gamers. This can include new features, games, onboarding tools and just about anything that improves the on-chain experience in a gaming context.”