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It's staggering to look at where video games are now compared to 30, 20, even just ten years ago. It's also exciting to imagine where the industry is going and where it will be a few years from now. The latest generation of consoles is only a year old and there's no telling what else there is to come from PlayStation and Xbox. One thing we do know is the latter won't be getting caught up in any NFT hype, at least not yet.
Xbox boss Phil Spencer was asked about NFTs during an interview with Axios's Stephen Totilo, and his answer was a breath of fresh air amid a landscape of increasing support for the tokens. “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,” Spencer said.
That's not to say Xbox will never utilize and sell NFTs in its games. Spencer clarified that he doesn't think every studio branching out into the NFT market is trying to exploit players, but that there is still a lot of figuring out to do in an area that is very new to the gaming world. He did add Xbox would “take action on” anything on its storefront that it deemed to be exploitative. “We don't want that kind of content.”
That suggests it's going to be a while before we see NFTs on Xbox, something that might not sit well with some of the studios already dead set on using them. Square Enix, Ubisoft, and EA have all openly revealed their intentions to incorporate NFTs into their games. EA has even labeled them the future of the video game industry, something Spencer doesn't appear to agree with.
If you're still not entirely clear on what an NFT is or why someone would be willing to pay millions for them, you're not the only one. The token is effectively a digital receipt. Most take the form of images that can be copied and saved by anyone, but is only truly owned by one person. That can be employed in games via unique items and skins that can only be owned and used by one player. The damage powering the technology that utilizes them does to the environment also can't be underplayed.