Former PlayStation Boss Shawn Layden Joins NFT Gaming Firm READYgg

Layden departed Sony in 2019 because the Chairman of Sony Interactive Leisure (SIE) Studios and had concurrently served because the President and CEO of Sony Pc Leisure America from 2014 to 2018. Since leaving the gaming large, he’s served as an advisor for a number of companies, together with Chinese language tech titan Tencent.

READYgg, which provides builders instruments to implement NFTs, crypto wallets, and different applied sciences inside their video games, mentioned that Layden will faucet his recreation trade expertise to assist the startup make connections with publishers and creators.

He may also “advocate for community-centric gaming that empowers gamers,” per a press launch, and assist READYgg develop market methods. Requested by Decrypt’s GG what alternatives he sees within the Web3 gaming house, Layden pointed to the expertise being an “enabler” for issues like user-generated content material (UGC).

“Whereas Web3 means many issues, generally various things to totally different of us, I see the tech as an enabler to a inventive and business on-ramp for players,” Layden mentioned, pointing particularly to “clear monitoring of UGC transactions the place gamer-to-gamer commerce is secure and helpful to all events.”

“I really feel that this crew has a wise and scalable technique to develop this infrastructure,” he added about READYgg, “and to advertise and populate it throughout a set of video games and platforms.”

Blockchain video games haven’t been adopted but by console makers like Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo, and a few players have been vocally opposed to the usage of such applied sciences.

The upcoming first-person shooter Off the Grid, which is constructed on an Avalanche subnet and can characteristic NFTs, is slated to return to Xbox and PlayStation along with PC. What’s not clear, nevertheless, is how these variations will deal with the blockchain parts—or if they’ll even embody these options. A Gunzilla Video games consultant lately instructed Decrypt’s GG that the studio was “merely not able to disclose all of the interior workings” of the console variations of Off the Grid.

Whereas the final premise of blockchain performance on recreation consoles stays an open query, Layden mentioned that he believes the platform makers will inevitably need to “take discover” ultimately—however that there’s work to be performed first.

“First movers will seemingly be within the PC/cellular arenas the place experimentation and iteration are extra simply superior,” he instructed Decrypt’s GG. “As soon as we get some foundational work in place, I imagine the console platforms must take discover and take up.”

READYgg’s $4 million funding spherical included investments from Delphi Digital, NeoTokyo, Advantage Circle, Momentum6, Purechain Capital, Alex Becker, and Token Metrics Ventures. No valuation was disclosed.

David Bennahum, CEO of READYgg, instructed Decrypt’s GG that the brand new funding shall be used to assist broaden the startup’s enterprise improvement efforts to achieve extra components of the world, convey on extra engineers to help with creating crypto gaming economies, and to assist launch a “player-centric group.”

On high of all of that, the corporate is on the point of launch its personal RDYX crypto token later this yr, which shall be used to reward early customers, present governance rights to holders, and allow platform-wide transactions and trades throughout video games within the ecosystem.