As the landscape of gaming continues to morph and expand, the industry finds itself having to take increasingly massive leaps to keep up with technological advancements. One recent creation that isn’t an ‘advancement’ by any definition is NFTs, and it seems that Xbox boss Phil Spencer agrees. In an interview with Axios’s Stephen Totilo, Microsoft’s executive vice-president of gaming gave a very refreshing and reasonable response in regard to the tokens, which continue to be a hot topic among the community.
“What I’d say today on NFT, all up, is I think there’s a lot of speculation and experimentation that’s happening, and that some of the creative that I see today feels more exploitive than about entertainment. I don’t think it necessitates that every NFT game is exploitive, I just think we’re kind of in that journey of people figuring it out. I can understand that early on you see a lot of things that probably are not things you want to have in your store. “I think anything that we looked at in our storefront that we said is exploitive would be something that we would, you know, take action on. We don’t want that kind of content,” Spencer explained.
While Spencer seems to have an abundance of remaining brain cells, other major publishers have been quick to forgo what’s right in favor of what’s best for their pocketbooks. Sega, Ubisoft, Capcom, Epic, and others have announced that they will be exploring the NFT market, with some of those companies simply stating that they will be releasing them. One company that has been upfront about its aversion to NFTs is Valve, which recently blocked the sale of any titles using the technology from the Steam store.
Spencer is rightfully wary of the scammy nature of NFTs, though the Xbox boss doesn’t say the word ‘never’ when it comes to their inclusion in Xbox titles. Even still, it’s nice to see some well-deserved skepticism.