There’s some dk-butterfly-related excitement and speculative hype around next week which will likely be a nothing-burger, but this is the promise of GME-affecting news (for better or worse), considering Microsoft’s initiative to no longer sell physical game “tokens” (that’s all the discs are these days).
This reminds me of RC’s tweet/reply on July 17th 2023 to Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, saying “Satya, GameStop is a large Microsoft customer. I’ve been trying to reach you and being ignored.”
We can only hope this is good news. Perhaps the broader Xbox community’s massive negative feedback regarding this revelation has forced Microsoft to either A) reverse the decision and promise continued physical game discs/tokens, or B) reveal their future plans for cryptographic game authorization tokens, IE NFTs, which might provide answers (or somehow tie into) regarding GME’s cancelled NFT marketplace & Playr.
This article wasn’t exclusive to game informer - it was all over my news feeds from many sources, just absent from the subreddits & Lemmy communities in this investment path’s orbit.
My wild speculation is that Microsoft is releasing many titles and studios from exclusivity because there will be a universal game marketplace. Such a marketplace would have to have 2 of the 3 major console platforms on it, and as such would have to be operated by an independent 3rd party…