Xbox Forms Labs Team to Test New Gaming Ideas

Xbox has established Xbox Labs, a small internal team tasked with developing and testing ideas that could give players and developers new ways to access, create and experience games. CEO Asha Sharma announced the initiative on October 13, describing a group of game makers, engineers and scientists that will explore emerging ideas and assess them through user response. Sharma said the team would work openly and measure success by whether more people play and create. She linked the initiative to recent projects that combine games or adapt them to run on different hardware, some of which have been made with artificial-intelligence tools. The company has not made AI a requirement for Xbox Labs, however. A spokesperson said the team would use technology, including AI, only where it is useful or necessary. The initiative formalizes research and development already under way, according to the spokesperson. Areas of work include making games available through web browsers, porting games to Apple silicon, developing additional features and supporting modders. Browser distribution is a particular area of interest, including investigation of the WebGPU platform, which is widely available.