Xbox chief Asha Sharma creates Xbox Labs after a wave of games being rapidly decompiled, ported and remixed with new tools
Today we're standing up XBOX LABS (t.co/dJSufI1vni). Here is the note that I sent to the team: Team, The first video games emerged some 75 years ago. In the time since, there have been booms and busts, but every year there are more great games to play, more devices to play them, and best of all, more people than ever playing. That growth helped make XBOX what it is today, and we've helped shape the industry in return, from bringing hard drives to consoles and online gaming through Xbox Live to Game Pass and cloud gaming, alongside franchises that have brought millions of people together. In recent weeks, we've seen games rapidly decompiled and rebuilt to run on hardware they were never originally designed to support. 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. 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, I’ve asked Scott to stand-up XBOX LABS, a small group of game makers, engineers and scientists whose job is to turn emerging ideas into things our players and developers can experience. 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 that is game design led without abandoning the work already underway. Asha
Context
Microsoft is treating the fast porting and remixing of games, much of it enabled by AI coding tools, as an opportunity to shape rather than a threat to fight.
Asha Sharma leads Microsoft's Xbox business, and her post is the note she sent to the team, also published on Xbox Wire. Her note links the effort to agents through a comparison between games and coding. Video Games Chronicle framed the move as a response to AI powered mods and ports.
Deep dive
On October 13, Asha Sharma posted: Today we're standing up XBOX LABS, sharing the note she sent to the team.
She wrote that in recent weeks games have been rapidly decompiled and rebuilt to run on hardware they were never designed for, with Windows PC builds translated to Apple Silicon or ported into browsers through WebAssembly and WebGPU. She added that many of the biggest games have even been remixed into the source code of another.
She wrote that these experiments challenge long held assumptions about the tie between software and hardware and the boundary between creation and play. She said she has asked Scott to stand up Xbox Labs, a small group of game makers, engineers and scientists who will turn emerging ideas into things players and developers can experience, and build in the open. GeekWire identified him as Scott Van Vliet.
Sharma wrote that coding became the first major workload for agents because agents can write, run and test software, and that games share many of those properties. She said people spend more than 72 billion hours a year playing Xbox games, about five times the estimated time spent writing code worldwide. She added that Xbox's priorities are not changing and that it will remain a responsible steward of its intellectual property.
What to expect next
Watch what Xbox Labs releases first, and whether it shares tools with other developers as Sharma promised.
Also watch how Microsoft balances openness with protecting its game intellectual property, since rapid AI assisted ports and remixes raise legal questions for the whole industry. Reactions from game studios and fans will also show whether Xbox Labs is seen as embracing community experiments or as a way to bring them under Microsoft's control.