In 2021, video game trailblazer, Atari, announced that they were getting into the metaverse craze early by jumping into the Decentraland virtual shared space, opening a crypto casino in its Vegas City district. The projected move made headlines in March 2021, and the following month, Atari launched its metaverse venue with a party MC’d by DJ Dillon Francis. During the festivities, exclusively created NFTs fashioned by the visual artist MERDA got auctioned off at the OpenSea platform.
The Atari metaverse casino is a partnership between this California game company and Decentral Games, the entity behind the Decentraland platform and the founder of the Decentral Games crypto, DG. Decentraland is likely the most famous open-world-like hub on the Web, and venture capital companies like Digital Currency Group have placed sizeable investments in it, seeing it as a fad that will probably go mainstream relatively soon. Below an explanation gets presented of the details regarding Atari’s cryptocurrency casino in this metaverse paired with a short analysis concerning if this was a sound play by this video game pioneer.
Atari’s Gaming Background
Anyone alive during the 1980s and 1990s who had so much as a fleeting interest in video games likely has at least heard of Atari. The name sounds Japanese because it is. It refers to a term for the ancient board game GO, which translates to hit a target. However, the company itself has always been American, the brainchild of Ted Dabney and Nolan Bushnell, who founded it in 1971. It rose to prominence thanks to Pong, a legendary title based on one of the first computer video games ever, Tennis for Two.
During the late 1970s and 1980s, Atari dominated the home console market with its series of video game systems, a franchise it started with the Atari 2600. However, following the video game industry crash of 1983, Atari, like many of its competitors, fell on hard times. Thus, it began to experiment with creating lines of personal computers and portable consoles but failed to come close to reaching its previous heights. During its existence, Atari’s ownership structure changed several times with varying business results. In 1993, the company produced its Jaguar system, a console that promised much but failed to meet market expectations, and got steamrolled by the debut of Sony’s PlayStation in 1995.
From the start of the 2000s, Atari’s brand has continuously tried to reinvent itself, exploring various avenues, including real money gambling. Hence, to those familiar with its history, its entry into the crypto gambling site area of this industry should come as no surprise. Bitcoin casinos are now all the rage, so why shouldn’t a famous game entity like Atari try its luck in this sector?
NFTs & Atari’s Signature Token
Designed by Atari Chain Ltd., a subsidiary of Atari Interactive, the Atari token is a decentralized crypto asset based on the Ethereum blockchain, utilizing its ERC-20 standard. The idea behind this currency is for it to become the go-to gambling token for the interactive entertainment industry, helping developers churn out crypto gambling products that feature smart contracts and protection of in-game assets. The Atari token can get purchased at the Atari Decentralized Exchange and other popular platforms like Coinbase. Its all-time high price point was $0.80, and its current circulating supply is 1,481,092,185 ATRI.
Naturally, the Atari token can get used in the company’s Decentraland location. It will likely be available at all future Atari crypto casinos if any launch. The brand saw its inception as another necessary step to grow in the NFT arena, something they have previous experience exploring. For example, in 2020, Fabricant/Enjin debuted a collection of Atari-inspired digital fashion NFTs, meaning wearables for metaverse avatars.
What Games Get Featured in Atari’s Crypto Casino?
Right now, the two gaming products found in Atari’s metaverse gambling locale are blackjack and roulette. Those are the two most famous table games ever, featuring default house edges of around 2%. In Atari’s venue, they get operated by robot-like dealers, and dozens of tables are available for both options. At every Bitcoin casino, these picks are on hand in the software and live dealer version, along with other traditional and novel gaming picks. That said, most Bitcoin gambling sites like those found on best-bitcoin-casino.com don’t allow token-based deposits. In Atari’s metaverse gaming spot, people can wager on these casino classics using DG, Atari, and MANA tokens.
The Metaverse Real Estate Boom
Yes, virtual real estate is a thing, and it is big business in 2022. Metaverses are essentially vast maps that users can traverse. They are 3D environments limited in scope, consisting of a fixed number of plots of land that people can buy at primary or secondary marketplaces. Identical to physical real estate, these properties can get bought, sold, or developed. Atari leased the Vegas City area on which it constructed its casino for two years.
According to a report from Grayscale, a crypto asset manager, it should not come as a shock if investments in NFT and digital real estate soar past one trillion soon, as, in early 2022, prices for virtual land jumped as high as 500%. Metaverses are the next iteration of social media, and they are taking the world by storm, something that will become even more apparent when Meta (Facebook) launches its shared space.
Was a Cryptocurrency Casino a Smart Investment by Atari?
Undoubtedly, it helps Atari expose new demographics to its brand and potentially intriguing them to check out the company’s existing catalog of retro games. Atari already has experience with real money gambling, so this is familiar ground for them. Furthermore, it lets them establish themselves in a fledgling industry, generating attention for its NFT projects and other crypto investments. As mentioned, Atari’s metaverse casino is currently not competitive with any premium Bitcoin gambling site on the internet. Yet, it provides a foundation they can build on, and it’s a massive publicity opportunity for the company, as each upgrade will appear in hundreds of media outlets.
Potential issues with running a virtual gambling establishment are looming crypto regulation regarding coin-based financial transactions and offering games of chance over the World Wide Web. Moreover, since this is such a niche field at the moment, opened
