Xbox starts a team to study how fans move old games to new devices
Microsoft's new Xbox Labs will explore how fans use AI to rebuild games so they run on devices they were never made for.
The Verge reports that Microsoft has set up Xbox Labs, a small team of developers, engineers and scientists. Xbox CEO Asha Sharma says in a memo that its job is to turn new ideas into things players and developers can try.
The move follows fan projects from recent weeks. Fans took finished games, worked backward to recover their code, and rebuilt them to run elsewhere, such as on Apple computers or inside a web browser. Some even mixed code from two games into one.
Sharma says Xbox will work openly and share its tools with developers. She says these projects can challenge Xbox's current business models. The Verge says Microsoft did not answer its question about fans making Microsoft's games available without permission.
From the sourceRead the original at The Verge AI →Nothing new is available to play yet. Xbox says it will share the tools Xbox Labs builds with game developers.
The facts
- Microsoft has created a new group called Xbox Labs to explore decompiling and recompiling games, meaning working backward from a finished game and rebuilding it.
- Xbox CEO Asha Sharma says Xbox Labs will be made up of game makers, engineers and scientists, and will be small.
- Sharma says Xbox will work in the open and will judge Xbox Labs by whether more people end up playing and creating.
- Sharma says recent experiments include Windows PC versions of games rebuilt to run on Apple computers and games ported to run inside a web browser.
- Sharma says Xbox will share the tools it builds with developers across the industry.
- Sharma says people play Xbox games for more than 72 billion hours a year, which she puts at about five times the estimated hours spent writing code around the world.
- Microsoft did not respond in time to The Verge's request for comment on unauthorized use of its games.
Sources
- The Verge AI: Xbox is officially embracing the chaos of AI-powered game ports
Published
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