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First “NFT games console” announced, the Polium One

Polium One, first “NFT games console” announced

So there’s a new gaming console on the horizon, called the Polium One. The game console is focusing on Web3, which is a buzzword for NFT-based projects that exist online. If you have no idea what that means, you aren’t alone. The announcement says they plan to have a prototype console ready by the end of 2022, but I find that hard to believe.

The company said in response tweets that they will have a machine capable of competing with modern gaming machines while also being accessible to modern gamers. “The console will be powerful enough to run high-performance games and will be easy to use for a traditional gamer who doesn’t understand Web 3.”

The crux of the offering for NFT games is that the console acts to facilitate the transaction. Apparently, the console’s controller will include a fingerprint scanner. And it will also feature a button dedicated to one’s wallet, making transactions faster. Polium says that this “multi-chain wallet” is for “trading, swapping, staking and receiving cryptocurrency.” You know, just like any modern payment processor that platforms like EGS and Steam use all the time.

The first obvious problem here is that the idea of cryptocurrency even going mainstream enough to see this project work is a non-starter. Barriers to entry are a thing, decentralized finance is a notoriously scam-heavy market, scaring off most average consumers. And that’s to say nothing of the added technical hurdles that mean most won’t bother. There’s a reason why Steam stopped accepting bitcoin cryptocurrency, as the amount of cost and time associated with managing it wasn’t worth it to appeal to a small market. Honestly, who’s going to waste time setting up crypto wallets when they can just buy a game on Steam?

This usage of buzzwords with little substance is laden over the entire Polium One project. The announcement is loaded with all kinds of word salad, which ultimately means little. It’s also worth noting that the majority of comments on the Twitter thread are of the same style. Dozens of generic positive statements from blatant bots comprise all the positive feedback Polium One has received. The rest of the comments are loaded with people asking simple questions like “What games are actually planned,” and only getting vague promises in return.

The company—which they admit is only staffed by four people who “have experience in hardware and software”—is “in talks with different Web 3 Game Developers and will make some announcements soon.” In other words, you’re not doing anything and this project is destined for the dust bin.

But in case you need more convincing, keep reading. Just read this and tell me what you think it means: “The console will be built and we will execute on the roadmap. This space bashes builders who are building for Web 3 to help it expand. We are also building the console for ourselves and will not stop.” That sounds like the most ‘I think I’m the next Steve Jobs’ nonsense I’ve ever read, and they seem to believe it enough to post it.

To add to the suspicion over a scam, Polium seems to think that the difficulty in developing a gaming console is in the bureaucracy. “It takes console giants 5+ years because they are console giants. They have a reputation and must get approval from multiple departments and key investors through the hardware development process,” they said in a tweet. That’s just not how any of this works. Let me explain this simply so the teenager behind this obvious scam understands: The reason consoles take years to develop is because of the industry involved. Designing and procuring materials takes very talented engineers years to do, and they do their job a lot better than an NFT scammer ever will do theirs.

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