TL; DR
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Atari is about to launch some of its retro games on the blockchain, starting with Asteroids; That might be nice, but it might also not make sense…
Full story
If you grew up at the arcade, chances are you played Atari’s game Asteroids (see gif 👆).
Well, in another case of ‘old-school company moves to web3’, Atari is about to launch some of its retro games on the blockchain, starting with Asteroids.
Atari has essentially created an on-chain arcade, complete with NFT entry passes and scores recorded on the blockchain (it’s built on Base).
On the one hand, this is really cool.
Players can compete against each other on the leaderboard for weekly prizes, with all scores verified on the blockchain.
It’s also good marketing.
I mean, who likes retro video games? Nerds.
Who else loves crypto? Nerds.
But here’s the thing…
To play Asteroids, you will need to purchase (purchase) an NFT Access Pass for $5.25 (0.0015 ETH).
And while this won’t break the bank for most people, it’s still a more expensive option with more friction than all free options that already exist online.
Where web3 could be It could be useful if Atari launches a whole bunch of new games and as a player your score/character/profile translates between games.
Maybe that’s part of the bigger vision (or maybe not, we have no idea).
But in a world where so many games are free, getting thousands or millions of games on board with a prepaid version instead can be a tough ask.
But then again, who knows – we’d love to be wrong!
