Xbox 推出 Xbox Labs 回应 AI 驱动的游戏 Mod 与移植项目

In the weeks leading up to publication, a number of software engineers and modders have decompiled and recompiled games, unlocked mods, and accelerated game emulation, resulting in everything from a browser-based Fallout: New York game to full PlayStation 5 game ports using AnyPS5. It seems as though Microsoft has now taken notice of the uptick in these AI-accelerated game mods and unofficial port projects and launched Xbox Labs in response.

In a recent email shared by Xbox CEO, Asha Sharma, she explains that the rapidly accelerating pace of game and mod development that has been a result of these AI "experiments challenge long-held assumptions about our industry," and that "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." The motivation behind Xbox Labs appears to be to get out ahead of these AI projects and "turn emerging ideas into things our players and developers can experience."

The announcement says that Xbox will use Xbox Labs to "build in the open, learn from what people do, and measure success by whether more people are playing and creating." Notably, when Asha Sharma took over Xbox, there was a lot of skepticism about how she would approach the topic of AI in game development at Xbox Game Studios, and, while it's still a far cry away from Epic Games's recent push to become an AI-first company with "no handwritten code," this may be Sharma's first big step into AI in game design and development, even though she is careful to note that Xbox Labs will remain separate from the mainline Xbox Game Studios projects—at least for now.

The full announcement follows:

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 without abandoning the work already underway.

Asha