Source: The New York Times
Key Points:
- The video game industry has been at the forefront of creating the metaverse since its inception
- Video game consoles and software are at an all-time high
- Microsoft has been positioning themselves to be a key player in the future of the metaverse for years
Two decades ago, Microsoft, once a boring software company, rolled out the Xbox in what would be a big bet on video gaming. It certainly paid off. Gaming was already on the upswing, but during the pandemic, the industry went gangbusters. Sales soared to over $150 billion in 2020. The industry is deeply interesting – less for its astronomical profits and more because of how the gaming business is, in many ways, on the frontier of tech and always has been. They’ve built out 3D virtual worlds in which people can interact freely, co-create content, and trade in virtual economies. And the industry has grappled early and continually with issues of trolling, content moderation and sexism, which plague much of tech. There’s a leader in the gaming space who recently spoke about about where the industry is going and how it thinks about its powerful role in tech – Phil Spencer, the head of Xbox and executive vice president of Gaming at Microsoft.