Xbox CEO Asha Sharma announced the establishment of Xbox Labs, with Xbox technology lead Scott Van Vliet assembling a small team to explore new gaming technologies. The team plans to turn new ideas into tangible experiences for players and developers, though specific projects have not yet been announced.
The team will consist of game creators, engineers, and scientists. Sharma stated that Xbox Labs will work openly and measure success by whether people care about the actual products released.
When discussing potential directions for new technologies, Sharma cited some existing attempts: some have re-engineered games to run on hardware that originally didn't support them; others have ported Windows PC versions to Apple Silicon, or used WebAssembly and WebGPU to bring games into browsers. These examples are not projects announced by Xbox Labs.
The announcement concluded by mentioning agents capable of writing, running, and testing software, without directly using the term "AI." Based on this, Kotaku believes that the establishment of Xbox Labs is related to the rise of generative AI game projects. After taking office, Sharma canceled a planned generative AI game tutorial feature, and a batch of AI features previously launched by Xbox had also sparked online backlash. It remains to be seen what usable results Xbox Labs will deliver.