Xbox负责人Asha Sharma宣布成立Xbox Labs探索新兴想法

Xbox boss Asha Sharma has announced to her team today that a new division has been set up at Microsoft called "Xbox Labs", and its intention is to "explore" the possibilities of "what new technologies make possible".

Her message references new developments like the rapid decompilation of games that we've seen in recent times, as well as games getting remixed from one title into another.

She says that these experiments "challenge long-held assumptions about our industry", and that it's "easy
to see the possibilities" in situations like "making great games easier to access" and "giving old games new life".

"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 billions 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."

As a result of all this, Xbox Labs is being helmed by "a small group of game makers, engineers and scientists" whose intention is to "turn emerging ideas into things our players and developers can experience".

Sharma says Xbox has "an important role to play here", and that she wants "our game makers to help shape what these new technologies make possible".

Here's a bit more of the message to her team:

"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. "

As you can see, there's actually a working link to the Xbox Labs website in here as well, but it doesn't really do much at the moment - there's a box where you can enter your email address to get updates, and it also displays a tagline of "let's play with what's next".

The Xbox CEO finishes off her message by insisting that "our priorities aren't changing" and that the point of Xbox Labs is to "explore new technology without abandoning the work already underway".

"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. "

That's all we have on Xbox Labs at the moment, and it's obviously hard to get a proper grasp on what the division will be delivering in the future, but it sounds like they're going to be transparent along the way.

Let's wait and see, eh? For now, let us know your thoughts on Asha's comments down below.