EA says NFTs will have a ‘meaningful part’ in the gaming industry’s future

Electronic Arts may not have any solid plans that involve non-fungible tokens (NFTs) anytime soon, but the company is not closing its doors. CEO Andrew Wilson expects these digital collections to have a "meaningful part" in the future of the video games industry.

Wilson tackled questions about EA's views on introducing NFTs as part of its massive projects catalog during EA's Q2 2022 earnings call on Wednesday. While EA does not seem to be working on NFTs or play-to-earn projects at the moment, Wilson appears to have high expectations for blockchain-based content.

The EA exec recognized the hype around NFTs. But he also noted, and many tech enthusiasts may agree, that NFTs and video games with play-to-earn models are still in their early stages. Despite its continuing rise over the last year, they have also been riddled with controversies. NFTs remain primarily unregulated and are quite susceptible to scams. There are also concerns about the environmental effects of blockchain caused mainly by cryptocurrency mining.

While Wilson thinks NFTs will be "important" to the future of gaming, he said, "It's still early to kind of figure out how that's going to work." EA is also not entirely new to making digital collectibles appealing to its fanbase, as evidenced by the FIFA Ultimate Team (FUT) game mode in EA Sports' football sim franchise. In FUT, players can collect cards by purchasing loot boxes with in-game coins that have real-money value. Players can either use those cards to improve their player roster or put it up for trade on the in-game Trade Market.

"What we know about collection over time is the collectibility is far more valuable to the collector where the collected item has utility," the EA CEO explained. "And I think that in the context of the games that we create and the live services that we offer, collectible digital content is going to play a meaningful part in our future."

EA is not the first AAA games publisher to show interest in making NFTs part of its future businesses. Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot also has a positive outlook about the NFTs and play-to-earn games. Ubisoft might have a more advanced approach than EA, though, as Guillemot said, Ubisoft has already had discussions about going into the blockchain. "We want to be one of the key players there," Guillemot added.

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