Gaming
Nintendo says it has ‘interest’ in NFTs and the metaverse
But don't expect to see a bored ape in a Mario cap anytime soon.
NFTs continue to be a hot trend in tech, with many unfortunate video game companies taking an awkward plunge into the space — only for their fans and associates to ridicule them for it.
In a recent Q&A session with Nintendo executives, the masters of Mario reportedly said that it has "interest" in NFTs and the metaverse, but that it doesn't know how to make it "fun" yet.
Breath of the mild — The meeting followed the publication of Nintendo's latest financial results, which revealed that the Switch recently passed the Wii to become the company's best-selling home console. While the question asked Nintendo about NFTs and the metaverse, however, it seems that the answer was mostly considering the metaverse part of the query, and specifically how it relates to life sim games like Animal Crossing.
“The metaverse is attracting the attention of many companies around the world, and we believe that it has great potential," VGC's translation of the official answer reads. "In addition, when the metaverse is mentioned in the media, software such as Animal Crossing is sometimes cited as an example, and in this sense, we are interested in it.
"On the other hand, it is not easy to define what kind of surprise and fun the metaverse can provide to customers…If we can find a way to communicate our ‘Nintendo approach’ to many people in an easy-to-understand manner, we may be able to consider something, but we do not believe that this is the case at this time."
Outlook unclear — As a whole, this response appears to be well in the strike zone for how large gaming companies are approaching the NFT and metaverse hype. EA CEO Andrew Wilson recently stated that the company isn't focused on NFTs at the moment, but it continues to monitor the technology for possible integration later.
Given that several notable publishers — most recently Team17 — have had to publicly abandon NFT partnerships due to backlash, this caution is probably a good idea. Then again, that hasn’t stopped Ubisoft or Konami from hurtling ahead with their own NFT programs, but we’ll have to see how those shape up.
