XBOX head Asha Sharma has announced the launch of XBOX LABS, a new division dedicated to exploring technological innovations and finding ways to apply them to the gaming industry. The company recently also introduced XP, an initiative focused on expanding its gaming franchises beyond video games through movies, TV shows, anime, and other media.
The new team will be led by XBOX Chief Technology Officer Scott Van Vliet. It will bring together developers, engineers, and scientists tasked with exploring new ideas and turning them into tools and products that employees and players can try.
One potential area of research is the use of advanced artificial intelligence models. Recent experiments have demonstrated how new technologies can help enthusiasts adapt games for platforms they were never designed to run on, revive older projects, and port software directly to web browsers.
Asha Sharma explained the reasoning behind XBOX LABS in an open letter:
The first video games appeared about 75 years ago. Since then, [the industry] has experienced both ups and downs, but the number of great games has continued to grow year after year. More devices have become available to play them on and, best of all, more people have started playing them. This growth helped make XBOX what it is today, and in turn, we helped shape the industry, from introducing hard drives in consoles and online gaming through Xbox Live to Game Pass and cloud services, as well as franchises that have brought millions of people together.
In recent weeks, we've watched how quickly games can be decompiled and reassembled to run on hardware they were never intended for. Windows applications have been adapted to run on Apple Silicon or ported directly to browsers using WebAssembly and WebGPU. <…> Perhaps even more remarkable is how many major games have been stitched together through reverse engineering their source code.
These experiments challenge established assumptions about our industry: the relationship between software and hardware, the boundary between development and actually playing a game, and how people discover and play titles. While the future of the industry is difficult to predict, it's easy to see the opportunities created by making great games more accessible, bringing older projects back to life, and turning more players into creators and co-creators. This is undoubtedly the best outcome for gamers, even when (and sometimes because) it challenges our existing business models. To explore these opportunities, I've asked Scott to lead XBOX LABS, a small group of developers, engineers, and scientists whose job is to turn new ideas into products that our employees and players can try. We'll work openly, learn from others, and measure success by how many people play and create.
I think XBOX can play an important role here. Programming became the first major task for AI agents because they can write, run, and test software. Games share many of the same characteristics, and people spend more than 72 billion hours playing games on XBOX each year, roughly five times the amount of time it takes to write code across the entire world. We've spent 25 years learning how to make great games, and I want our developers to help us understand the opportunities these new technologies create. As we gain experience, we'll share the tools we build with developers across the industry, just as we've done before.
Our priorities remain unchanged. We're still committed to four principles: making great games, developing our hardware, and treating intellectual property and the communities built around it responsibly. XBOX LABS gives us the opportunity to explore new technologies without interrupting the work already underway.
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