Xbox boss loves Metaverse but 'cautious' about play-to-earn games

Phil Spencer claims that "players have been in the metaverse for 30 years" because games already offer shared 3D worlds in which people can communicate.

Phil Spencer, the head of Microsoft's video game company Xbox, is optimistic about the Metaverse but remains "cautious" about play-to-earn (P2E) crypto games due to its economics and speculative.

Speaking to Bloomberg anchor Emily Chang on Aug. 25, Spencer suggested that while many gamers are still unconvinced by the current concept of a metaverse, by its definition, they essentially play in worlds metaverse for decades :

"My take on the metaverse is that gamers have been in the metaverse for 30 years. When you play games, if you play a World of Warcraft game, you play Roblox, you play a game where everyone is in a shared world."

In Spencer's view, the metaverse is essentially a "3D shared world" in which people can freely communicate with each other and engage in shared experiences and common goals.

"It's not at all surprising to me that players can look at Metaverse and think that I don't really understand because we already have an avatar of myself and I can already go to a shared world and I I can already sit in it and have voice conversations with people anywhere,” he said.

Spencer's sentiments echo those of Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who after telling Bloomberg in November that people could "absolutely expect" the company to make steps in the game Metaverse, noted that:

"If you take Halo as a game, it's a Metaverse. Minecraft is a Metaverse, and so is Flight Sim. In a sense, they're 2D today and the question is, can you now turn this into a fully 3D world, and we are absolutely planning on doing that."

Spencer did not, however, address more contentious issues in the Metaverse, such as the concept of ownership of the Metaverse's virtual ownership via NFTs.