Take-Two, the publishing company behind the Grand Theft Auto video game franchise, has its eye on the potential opportunities presented by NFTs.
"We're highly convinced there's an opportunity for NFTs to fit with Take-Two's offerings in the future," Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick reportedly said via Nintendo Life.
Zelnick did caveat his words on NFTs, however.
"We believe in rare goods, we believe in collectibles. The concern we have is that there's speculation going on," he said. "We want to make sure that consumers always have a good experience every time they engage with our properties and losing money on a speculation is not a good experience, so we're going to stay away from speculation."
Zelnick's words come amid a wider controversy that has put the gaming industry and NFT industry on a collision course.
Gaming and NFTs
Multiple gaming companies have already jumped on the NFT bandwagon.
In December last year, Ubisoft became the first major gaming company to launch in-game NFTs. After major backlash from gamers who did not support the move, Ubisoft doubled down, claiming that NFTs were a major change that would take time.
"This experiment is meant to understand how the value proposition of decentralization can be received and embraced by our players. We know it is a major change that will take time, but we will stay true to our three principles," Ubisoft's Blockchain Technical Director Didier Genevois told Decrypt.
Those three principles include using tech responsibly and building a safe environment, only leveraging energy-efficient proof-of-stake blockchains, and focusing on "meaningful value propositions" for players.
Elsewhere, Square Enix—the company behind the Final Fantasy franchise—is also bullish on the future of gaming and NFTs.
In an end-of-year letter for 2021, Square Enix President Yosuke Matsuda said blockchain games would be an area that the company should focus on in the future. The company first signaled its intention to explore NFTs in November 2021.