Xbox is creating the XBOX LABS laboratory for bold gaming experiments

Xbox announced the creation of XBOX LABS, which it told employees about in a letter. It is a small team of game developers, engineers and scientists. Its job is to turn new technical ideas into things players and game creators can try.

The occasion was experiments from recent weeks. Game builds for Windows are being ported to Apple Silicon and run directly in the browser via WebAssembly and WebGPU, whose browser support is already approaching 90%. Some of the largest games have been embedded into the source code of another game. In Xbox's view, such experiments call into question the usual ideas about the industry: the link between software and hardware, the boundary between creating and playing, and how people find games and get to know them.

Xbox recalls that its games are played for more than 72 billion hours a year. That is roughly five times more time than the world spends writing code. Programming became the first major task for agents because they can write, run and check code, and games have similar properties.

The laboratory promises to work openly, learn from what people do, and measure success by whether the number of those who play and create is growing. It intends to share finished tools with developers across the industry.

The company's priorities do not change: making good games, developing its own hardware, and taking responsibility for intellectual property and the communities around it. The laboratory is needed to study new technologies without abandoning work already started. Video games are about 75 years old, and Xbox has been learning to make games for 25 years.

Image: Microsoft Corporation Public domain

Translation editor: Ловушкин А.