I don't necessarily believe in MOASS happening anymore, but I do have a strong believe that introducing an NFT marketplace and what else GME has in store will make sure the long term view for this company is optimistic. Wallstreet might have "won", but it seems that SEC is introducing new bills to prevent some of the stuff that was going on.. Hopefully they will start enforcing it as well.
A more jaded individual would see the introduction of elements like an NFT store to be less long term planning and more capitalizing on its new fan base which is heavily jaded with the current system and so prone to accepting opportunities to upset the market, regardless of actual merit.
a company shoehorning in NFT's is not a "long term" plan, it's a dying brand capitalizing on the latest craze that will almost certainly die out alongside it.
Precisely. Many, many retailers have gone out of business in my country in the last ten years and a lot of them died painfully. Trying desperately to turn things around- unsuccessfully.
Valve essentially stopped making games because selling virtual items is so insanely profitable. Being able to sell digital rights to items and then take a sellers fee no matter what platform that item is resold on later could be a huge deal, if that's what they're building.
I wouldn't agree with that, but even accepting that premise as true, why would gamestop be in any position to benefit from this? If you're, say, activision, why would you possibly sell your digital content on gamestop's platform where you owe gamestop a cut rather than on your own platform where you get the cut? Why would you put it on a blockchain at all? Just use your own boring db.
More than that, it is taking a decentralized tech and centralizing it. The point of this benefitting GME is because it would be a market they absolutely control (so they can get a cut of the profits). What's the point of a crypto tech in that case?
There are facts out there amongst the near constant stream of BS on reddit. GameStop filed a SEC form [0] about disclosing a partnership with Immutable X, which is in the NFT space for games, not art.
The market for in-game purchases (like every mobile game for crying out loud) is huge. Epic games' Fortnite is 100% free to play but has a store for purchasing cosmetic stuff (and a lawsuit with Apple over this). There was $3.7 Billion dollars of revenue associated with Fortnite in 2019 [1]. Billion with a B. All cosmetic, in-game items.
What is reported as being built would be a marketplace for gamers, and possibly content creators (people that build mods, skins, maps, etc. for games if allowed) to buy/sell/trade these in-game items. Not $10k GIF's of apes or whatever nonsense. Instead of spending $5 or $20 on something and it sits on a gamers account, think of it as they could spend that and later on they could re-sell it or trade on a marketplace.
I don't think any of this requires blockchain or NFT. I think the companies involved are using that because it ticks a lot of requirements boxes for basically Digital Rights Management with sales/resales built in (I think via ETH/smart contracts).
As silly as buying pixels for a game may sound, it already is a large market and a company like GameStop getting into that could capture a reliable subscription-like revenue stream not tied to game console refreshes or used physical games.
What would be sad is if this is a revolutionary type of change to an industry (i.e gamers own the digital sword they bought, maybe take it from one game-world to another like in Ready Player One?) but is squashed by the volume of noise about "hedge funds r bad, boo wall st" every time the company is brought up.
Please don't park any money behind this narrative unless it's literally money you'd burn in a campfire for just as much amusement.
There is zero chance of GME of all places becoming some sort of market for NTF game cosmetics. None of that blather matters if you don't have a user base, and there's no way GME is going to get one.
Why would Epic, Valve, etc go along with GME's scheme? If they want to offer unique to a single player items they can do so essentially trivially with their existing platform. They don't need to partner with anyone, just put a dev team or two on it for a short bit. They certainly don't need to partner with anyone like GME, let alone a bunch of shady cryptocoin operations running out of tax havens.
Basically no one cares about this utopia you're imagining to start with, and even if they did, there's no pathway to create it in the form of GME.
