Xbox’s Phil Spencer is trepidatious of ‘exploitive’ NFT games

More opinions from the Xbox head honcho

Phil Spencer has been making his thoughts known on many aspects of the video game industry and its future. Among talk of legal emulation, console shortages, and studio acquisitions, the Xbox Head of Gaming has also suggested that is viewing the controversial culture of NFTs with far more trepidation than some of his major league colleagues.

“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,” said Spencer in an interview with Axios. “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. And 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.”

From these comments, it’s clear that Spencer is not ruling out the concept of utilizing NFTs in Xbox’s future, but it seems that the black-and-green brand might be a little more cautious about showing its hand on the subject — no doubt fully aware of the raised eyebrows and dismay that has met other companies quick to leap on the crypto-culture bandwagon.

It seems that Xbox is adopting a “wait and see” approach, not quite committing to giving the rightfully controversial topic the double thumbs up. Other companies — including Sega Sammy, Ubisoft, Konami, and Discord — have not been nearly as coy, though this brazenness has not been rewarded with applause from the fans, rightly concerned over the crypto currency’s environmental impact and bizarre, non-existent nature. One thing’s for certain, the see-saw on NFTs in big business is still swinging, and I can imagine we’ll be writing a helluva lot more on this subject in the coming new year.

Xbox chief wary of ‘exploitive’ NFT gaming projects [Axios]