TL;DR

• Atari is about to launch a couple of its retro games on the blockchain, starting with Asteroids; which could be cool, but it also might not make sense…

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If you grew up going to the arcade, chances are you’ve played Atari’s game, Asteroids (see gif 👆).

Well, in another case of ‘old school company moves into web3,’ Atari is about to launch a couple of its retro games on the blockchain, starting with Asteroids.

Atari has essentially created an on-chain arcade, complete with NFT access passes and scores that are recorded on the blockchain (it was built on Base).

On one hand, this is really cool.

Players will be able to 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 loves retro video games? Nerds.

Who also loves crypto? Nerds.

But here’s the thing…

In order to play Asteroids you have to mint (i.e. buy) an NFT access pass for $5.25 (0.0015 ETH).

And while it’s not like that’s going to break the bank for most people, it’s still a more expensive, higher friction option than all of the free options that already exist online.

Where web3 could be useful is if Atari launches a whole bunch of new games and as a player, your score/character/profile translates across games.

Maybe that’s part of the larger vision (or maybe not, we have no idea).

But in a world where so many games are free, it might be a tough ask to onboard thousands or millions to an upfront paid version instead.

Then again, who knows - we’d love to be wrong!