Xbox CEO Eyes The Metaverse But Cautious Of Play-To-Earn Games

Xbox CEO eyes the Metaverse, stating that it is the future of gaming and the majority of gamers will be there in 30 years, but he is still cautious of play-to-earn games as he is wary of the need to perform menial tasks in order to accrue cryptocurrency.

Phil Spencer, the CEO of Microsoft’s Xbox division, is bullish on the Metaverse but “cautious” about play-to-earn (P2E) crypto games due to their economic and speculative aspects.

Spencer told Bloomberg anchor Emily Chang on August 25 that, while many gamers are not yet persuaded on the present notion of a Metaverse, they have effectively been playing in Metaverse worlds for decades:

“My view on Metaverse is that gamers have been in the Metaverse for 30 years. When you’re playing games, if you’re playing a World of Warcraft game, you’re playing in Roblox, you’re playing in a racing game where everybody’s in a shared world.”

Xbox CEO eyes the Metaverse, seeing earlier iterations of it in the more popular games in history, as per his statement.

According to Spencer, the Metaverse is essentially a “3D shared environment” in which individuals may freely speak with one another and partake in shared experiences and goals.

“It’s not at all surprising to me that gamers might look at Metaverse and think well I don’t really get it because we already have an avatar of myself and I can already go into a shared world and I can already sit there and have voice conversations with people anywhere,” he said.

Spencer’s thoughts are similar to those of Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who told Bloomberg in November that consumers could definitely anticipate the company to make efforts in Metaverse gaming.

“If you take Halo as a game, it is a Metaverse. Minecraft is a Metaverse, and so is Flight Sim. In some sense, they’re 2D today and the question is can you now take that to a fully 3D world, and we absolutely plan to do so.”

Spencer, on the other hand, did not address more problematic Metaverse problems, such as the notion of owning virtual Metaverse property through NFTs. Due to an apparent lack of value and scarcity, crypto proponent and billionaire investor Mark Cuban recently criticized virtual property investing as “the dumbest s—- ever.”

Instead, the Xbox boss went on to say that commercial use of the Metaverse realm has recently piqued the interest of Microsoft and CEO Nadella.

“But I do think the skills that we have as game designers and game creators make a ton of sense in a lot of enterprise experiences. And this is why Satya gets excited about it,” he said.

The Xbox head also said he still had some concerns about games being built around menial tasks in order to accrue digital currency, while admitting that monetization has been around for a while.

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