'GTA' Publisher Take-Two Interactive 'Highly Convinced" by NFT Market

With NFTs taking up center stage in almost all pop-culture and media, it was only a matter of time before the gaming industry also looked towards the world of crypto and blockchain, and now Grand Theft Auto publisher Take-Two Interactive is also looking to enter the market.

Speaking to Nintendo Life, the publisher recently said that it’s becoming more interested in the opportunities presented by the NFTs. “We’re highly convinced there’s an opportunity for NFTs to fit with Take-Two’s offerings in the future,” the company’s CEO Strauss Zelnick explained, although the company remains vigilant in a highly volatile market. “We believe in rare goods, we believe in collectibles. The concern we have is that there’s speculation going on,” he continued. “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.”

Take-Two wouldn’t be the first gaming company to look into NFTs. Late last year, Ubisoft became the first developer to launch its own gaming NFTs spanning different in-game items such as weapons and skins, but the move created large amounts of backlash among fans, who saw the sale as a quick cash-grab. Japanese gaming giant Square Enix also expressed similar interests in the technology, with its president Yosuke Matsuda revealing at the 2021 end-of-year letter that the developer would focus on blockchain games in the future.

In other related news, Gucci has now bought into the Sandbox metaverse.