Over 150 game studios have signed up to try the closed beta of blockchain-powered games distribution platform Ultra. Among them are Ubisoft, Amplitude Studios and a large Chinese company in the PC games space in China. The platform company hasn't revealed any further details about the involvement of game studios and publishers yet.
Whether every studio involved in the closed beta will also launch their products on Ultra, remains to be seen. Ubisoft officially announced their involvement as a business partner in November. At the same time we've seen Amplitude Studios featured in many promotional screenshots, while Ultra teased the involvement of a Chinese company in a recent blog post.
Ultra is currently testing its games distribution platform in a closed beta. Any developer can sign up to have a chance to try things out. The platform gives players ownership over tokenized video games, and in addition gives developers more control over financial income and secondary markets.
By using Ultra developers are able to upload game builds and create the rules through which these games are sold and distributed. Developers decide on the most efficient way to distribute games to their fans. They earn revenue from every sale without delay, and compared with other distribution platforms, the fees are quite low.
Ultra lets developers customize several parameters, like for example the option to allow secondary market trading. Developers also have the power to decide when to allow reselling, for how long, and the revenue cut they want on this resale. All these settings get stored into a token, which goes on sale in the Ultra store. In addition developers control the region in which builds are available. They can set a maximum amount of copies allowed for sale. This can create an interesting revenue opportunity when developers for example release limited edition downloadable content.
Ultra also wants to build on the concept of programmable money. Inside the platform developers and publishers could automatically set all kinds of revenue shares. For example the system will allow for contract negations and contract signing. As a result the localization firm, developers, publishers, marketing agencies, voice actors and everybody else automatically gets their revenue share.
This saves a lot of bureaucracy. The blockchain stores all contracts and deals, and after every transaction the earned money is split among the participants. This automatically gives Ultra an upper hand over any traditional games distribution platform.
In December computer hardware manufacturer AMD partnered with blockchain-based video game distribution platform Ultra. The two companies will cooperate on the marketing activities, including contests and events to promote the use of Ultra. This announcement followed after Ubisoft announcement their involvement in the project in November.
Blockchain will require companies to rethink their product strategies. Using consumer-owned digital assets in the entertainment industry only makes sense. It empowers consumers, and gives companies additional revenue streams. All this is build on business models these companies are already familiar with, but with the addition of blockchain technology. Blockchain could complete revolutionize the market for digital distribution.
