Tomonobu Itagaki is best known as the creator of the Dead or Alive series. Itagaki’s involvement in the games industry has declined in recent years with his most recent project being Devil’s Third in 2015. But the Dead or Alive creator is making his return by founding a new developer that specializes in NFT games.
As announced on Itagaki’s personal Twitter, the new company is called Apex Game Studios. Itagaki has promised that his new studio will focus on delivering “high quality and immersive 3A Web3.0 games.” For those unaware, Web 3.0 refers to various technologies like the blockchain and NFTs. The goal, according to Itagaki, is to produce games that take advantage of NFTs while also delivering AAA levels of content and quality.
This journey begins with Warrior, an MMORPG in development at Apex Game Studios. We don’t know too much about Warrior right now. It was confirmed that the game is being developed using the Unreal Engine. We also know that it will launch with randomly generated gear, 20 different skills, and 100 unique monsters to summon. The accompanying developer roadmap provides some insight as to when Warrior will be playable. A beta should arrive in the first quarter of 2023. The gradual launch of PvE and PvP content should follow in Q2.
NFTs in games
The concept of NFTs in games is nothing new, but it’s rare to see someone as prevalent as the creator of Dead or Alive get involved with them. The other similarly big example is Ubisoft’s reveal of its energy-efficient NFT platform, Quartz. Although it still doesn’t appear as though gamers are sold on the idea. The reality is that none of these publishers have provided a concrete reason as to why NFTs benefit gaming. Until a studio can stand up and list off several good reasons as to why we should care, people are unlikely to be convinced. As things stand, it just comes across as yet another attempt to milk fans for every last cent.
Developer roadmap for Warrior. (Source: Warrior official website)
