Mysten Labs announced that it is working with open operating system company Playtron to launch an open gaming handheld with multiple game stores, from Sui Web3 games to the Epic Games Store.
Mysten Labs (the original contributor to the Sui blockchain) unveiled the gaming handheld at the Sui Basecamp, a gathering in Paris for the Web3 community that has grown up around the Sui blockchain. It is taking place during the Paris Blockchain Week.
The SuiPlay0X1 is made possible by Playtron’s device-agnostic gaming operating system, PlaytronOS, which will be compatible with various hardware configurations. Playtron is building an ecosystem much like Android, the open mobile and PC operating system. It is an open operating system across multiple devices and multiple companies, said Kirt McMaster, CEO of Playtron, in an interview with GamesBeat.
“We’re building a new gaming operating system right to open up the PC. Effectively, we’re attempting to extract the PC gaming ecosystem from Windows and recontextualize in our own operating system,” McMaster said. “That gives users the access to all of the stores, Steam, Epic Games Store, Gog, etc. But all in a single launcher. You can sign in with your Steam account. You can sign in with your Epic Games account. All your games will appear in a single launcher. They’ll work in a single operating system.”
SuiPlay 0x1 will be the first handheld gaming console with native Web3 capabilities, and will be available in stores worldwide from 2025 onward, said said Adeniyi Abiodun, chief product officer at Mysten Labs, in an interview with GamesBeat.
The SuiPlay 0X1 is powered by Playtron’s device agnostic gaming operating system and boasts native Sui blockchain integration via zkLogin and Sui Kiosk SDKs, enabling asset ownership directly connected to a device’s account system for the first time in the gaming industry.
With the Sui device, McMaster said, “The whole idea here is to prove the market, to lift the ecosystem. Right now, Sui is the only blockchain in existence that has had the conviction to move forward with this. And from our point of view, that’s the only way you move the world. It’s people with conviction right now.”
The price for the device hasn’t been set, but it may be around $500. Of course, the big question for the crypto bros is whether they can use the device to mine Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Theoretically, it could happen.
The SuiPlay 0X1 will be capable of playing popular games from multiple storefronts and direct-download game partners. Playtron as a gaming operating system can work on virtually any handheld gaming device that is building up compatibility with various hardware configurations, gaming storefronts, and direct-download game partners.
Built in collaboration with Playtron, the SuiPlay0x1 will be a Sui-specific device which both showcases the power of Playtron and what a deeper Web3 integration at the game and the OS level can look like. It’s another way for Mysten Labs, which raised $400 million, to create a mass market for Web3 games beyond helping to fund cool games.
An open system
With Playtron, Sui will be integrated at the operating system (OS) account level of the device. Imagine if your Windows login, for example, was also connected to a Sui wallet/address on the backend. Any game activities, assets you own on Sui, and more would then be attached to your platform-wide account on a Playtron device. This will provide the deepest integration of blockchain technology we’ve seen with a physical device’s OS and will provide new layers of functionality for users.
Mysten Labs also has numerous game partners who are planning on launching games on the Sui blockchain, which offers speed and no gas fees, or transaction costs. Many of the games are still unannounced.
“I love the fact that we’re not literally excluding existing ecosystems with this,” said Abiodun. “We want every ecosystem to benefit. This is actually an uplift for Web3. And now this technology allows games to engage with users at a very high throughput, very high rate.”
Hardware details coming later
Regarding compatibility, developers don’t need to build specifically for Playtron since it will support many of the most popular game distribution platforms and hardware configurations. If developers want a deeper Web3 relationship and new functionality/opportunities to reach their players, they can integrate seamlessly with the OS-level integration of Sui wallets/addresses within Playtron for a unique, unified on-chain experience on the device.
The architecture of the device is to be determined. It might be based on Advanced Micro Devices technology. But there are other system-on-chip vendors that Playtron is working with.
“We’d like to think this is the first of many devices to come,” McMaster said. “We’re building a model like Android. Everything is unified. Your Steam game is going to sit beside your Epic game. And we’re going to do direct publishing to the launcher. We’re effectively turning a PC into a console.”
Asked if he might emulate Nintendo Switch games on the device, McMaster said, “If we had a trillion dollars, we could fight that battle. But you saw what happened with the Switch emulators getting shut down.
The necessity of having a lot of stores becomes more obvious when you consider the limitations of each store. Steam doesn’t allow Web3 games. Google doesn’t allow gambling games. Apple doesn’t put its store out on other devices.
With Web3 games, all of those games can be native for the first time, McMaster said.
“That’s a big deal,” he said.
McMaster noted that Solana launched its own mobile smartphone. And Ordz Games announced last week it plans to launch a Bitcoin-enabled BitBoy gaming handheld.
“The quicker we’re able to get mass market engagement with blockchain technologies, engaging with Web3 games, just using digital currencies for buying existing games and cosmetics, etc., the better it is, it’s going to be for everyone,” said Abiodun.
Playtron origins
Playtron has about 20 people and it raised $10 million about a year ago. It started showing the alpha of its operating system at the Game Developers Conference in March. Playtron has investors from the blockchain world such as Polytron and Sui.
“The Sui folks have a very large and compelling thesis around gaming. And I think we can all agree that gaming and digital currency mixed crypto just makes a lot of sense,” McMaster said. “There are some really compelling use cases. The big one, though, is just getting the mainstream in the mass market onboarded. Playtron is essentially going after the mass market handheld opportunity.”
McMaster has been inspired by the growth of Android on mobile.
“Sui has made it incredibly easy to onboard users with their wallet and fun transactions,” he said. “They get Web3games. And so this deep integration at an OS level enables Web3 gaming to be a first class citizen for the first time effectively on a console experience.”
The Playtron software will integrate all the stores with a program dubbed Playtron Select, which enables people to publish games directly to the launcher.
“The economics can be very different, depending on the type of game,” McMaster said. “We’re building a meta layer around core gaming. We want to bring that to the mass market.”
The view from Mysten/Sui
Abiodun noted that his team spun out of Facebook after it decided not to launch its own blockchain. They believed that people should own their own digital assets, including those in the game business.
“What we’re trying to do is basically create that world where the antithesis of ownership is employed directly using the chain. What matters to us is that, within gaming, gamers outspend almost every other entertainment industry,” Abiodun said. “It is where you’re going to get your billion users. For a proper perspective, we’ve built a chain that doesn’t have the scale issues. We don’t have the block contention issues of other chains that you you’ve heard of.”
He added, “We’ve already built a chain that scales and can handle gaming level traffic. So what we want to do is effectively with a meta layer that has been described, Sui can become part of that meta layer that allows game publishers to benefit their ecosystem with direct ownership of assets, whether it’s you’re using a stable coin to pay for a game, or whether you’re receiving rewards, or loyalty points for playing certain type of games, or entitlements that gives you discounts.”
Mysten Labs has about 70 games signed up for Sui, and more are coming. Making fun games will be critical not only for Sui, but for Playtron and the SuiPlay 0X1 too.
Sui is going to be the layer, and it can serve as a bridge between the different blockchain ecosystems, Abiodun said. You can also use Sui to store more than crude ownership records. You can use it to store details that can be imported into a game.
“You can get real efficient markets, and we’re very excited about this,” he said. “The concept of ownership is going to be super powerful and very unique.”
“One of the things that really impressed me with Sui is the simplicity of being able to set up a wallet like signing up with your Google account,” McMaster said. “So when you get the Playtron device, you can open it, sign in, and it generates the wallet.”
A game company could air drop a coupon or loyalty rewards to an email list of customers.
“They were ready to go for it. Let’s launch the world’s first native handheld gaming console,” McMaster said. “With the blockchain built in, that’s incredibly exciting.”
If you’re a non-Web3 gamer, you can play your Steam or Epic Games Store games. But you can also be easily introduced to Web3 because of the easy integration with the device. You can easily discover nwe games across all of the stores on a regular basis. If you get something in one game, you can use it in another game — that’s essentially a concept made more powerful by Web3 ownership.
“You don’t have to do anything involving crypto,” Abiodun said. “Users can transfer assets freely between each other without ever thinking about crypto or wallet addresses. That means the barrier is low for everyone that owns the device.”
Big ambitions
There’s more that will happen.
“You can see that we’ve got a lot of ideas here. It just speaks on the promise of the platform,” Abiodun said. “We think it’s gonna make crypto a lot more accessible to everybody without the scams or bad stuff that happens. It can actually be useful. We’re also aware of the backlash that crypto has had with gaming.”
He added, “We’ve been looking at how we go to market with this, but we think you have to have a device that makes sense, where people can actually value the utility and all the benefits that they can get of ownership, incentives and how they can have a better ownership experience around everything they do online.”
McMaster and Abiodun said that things that are considered illegal will not be allowed on the platform.
“We want to build something for gamers. That’s wholesome. But there are some games that might be controversial, but who are we to decide how people will spend their time doing what they want to do? If they’re not hurting anybody, and it’s legal, we’ll let them play the games they want to play. We’re not here to censor people.”