Asha Sharma forms ‘Xbox Labs’ in response to explosion of AI-powered mods and ports
Xbox CEO says AI mod explosion has changed assumptions around what’s possible
Microsoft has formed ‘Xbox Labs’ in response to the recent explosion in AI game modding and recompilations.
In recent weeks, modders have increasingly shared game ‘mashups’, like Mario platforming in Elden Ring, and unlikely ports, like Call of Duty running in a web browser, all powered by generative AI tool Claude’s new Opus 5.5 model.
In a note sent to staff on Tuesday, Xbox CEO Asha Sharma said the wave of AI-generated creations has changed assumptions around the boundaries of game development, and announced a new group tasked with experimenting with such emerging ideas.
“In recent weeks, we’ve seen games rapidly decompiled and rebuilt to run on hardware they were never originally designed to support,” Sharma wrote.
“Windows PC builds have been translated to run on Apple Silicon or ported to run inside a browser through WebAssembly and WebGPU, the latter now approaching 90% global browser support. Perhaps more surprisingly, we’ve seen many of the biggest games in the world have been remixed into the source code of another.”
She continued: “These experiments challenge long-held assumptions about our industry: the tether between software and hardware, the boundary between creation and play, and how people discover and experience games.
“While it is hard to predict the future of gaming, it is easy to see the possibilities in making great games easier to access, giving old games new life and allowing more players to become creators and co-creators. These are unmistakably good outcomes for players, even when (and sometimes because) they challenge our existing business models.”
To explore these possibilities, Sharma said she’s asked Scott Van Vliet, Xbox’s chief technology officer, to lead “a small group of game makers, engineers and scientists whose job is to turn emerging ideas into things our players and developers can experience.”
She said: “We’ll build in the open, learn from what people do, and measure success by whether more people are playing and creating.
“I think Xbox has an important role to play here. Coding became the first major workload for agents because they can write, run, and test software. Games share many of those same properties, and people spend more than 72 billion hours a year playing Xbox games, roughly five times the estimated time spent writing code worldwide.
“We’ve spent 25 years learning how to make great games, and I want our game makers to help shape what these new technologies make possible. As we learn, we’ll share the tools we build with developers across the industry, just as we always have.
“Our priorities aren’t changing. We remain committed to the 4Cs, to making great games, to our hardware and to being responsible stewards of IP and the communities built around it. LABS gives us a way to explore new technology without abandoning the work already underway.”
