Shawn Layden, who served a number of distinguished management roles in Sony’s PlayStation division throughout his 32 years with the corporate, has joined blockchain gaming infrastructure startup READYgg. The agency additionally introduced a brand new $4 million funding spherical alongside the appointment.
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 Laptop Leisure America from 2014 to 2018. Since leaving the gaming large, he’s served as an advisor for a number of corporations, together with Chinese language tech titan Tencent.
READYgg, which presents builders instruments to implement NFTs, crypto wallets, and different applied sciences inside their video games, stated that Layden will faucet his sport business 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 know-how being an “enabler” for issues like user-generated content material (UGC).
“Whereas Web3 means many issues, typically various things to completely different people, I see the tech as an enabler to a inventive and business on-ramp for players,” Layden stated, 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 group has a sensible and scalable solution to develop this infrastructure,” he added about READYgg, “and to advertise and populate it throughout a group 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.
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The upcoming first-person shooter Off the Grid, which is constructed on an Avalanche subnet and can function 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 may even embrace these options. A Gunzilla Video games consultant not too long ago instructed Decrypt’s GG that the studio was “merely not able to disclose all of the internal workings” of the console variations of Off the Grid.
Whereas the overall premise of blockchain performance on sport consoles stays an open query, Layden stated that he believes the platform makers will inevitably must “take discover” ultimately—however that there’s work to be completed first.
“First movers will possible 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 consider 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 might be used to assist increase the startup’s enterprise growth efforts to achieve extra components of the world, deliver on extra engineers to help with creating crypto gaming economies, and to assist launch a “player-centric neighborhood.”
On high of all of that, the corporate is on the brink of launch its personal RDYX crypto token later this yr, which might be used to reward early customers, present governance rights to holders, and allow platform-wide transactions and trades throughout video games within the ecosystem.