Xbox launches Xbox Labs to explore emerging technology
Xbox chief executive Asha Sharma introduced a small team that will work in the open and share its tools with the wider industry.
Xbox introduced Xbox Labs on Oct. 13, a new team of game makers, engineers and scientists. Asha Sharma, Xbox's chief executive, announced it in a message to all staff that Xbox Wire published the same day.
The group's job is to explore emerging technology so that games are easier to reach, so that older titles get a second life and so that more players become creators. As examples of the trend, Sharma mentions games rebuilt to run on different hardware, Windows running on Apple Silicon and in browsers, and one game's code reused in another.
The team promises to work in the open. "We'll build in the open," Sharma says, and over time it will share the tools it builds with developers across the industry. To back the bet, the message cites a figure: 72 billion hours a year spent playing on Xbox. The company itself produced it and did not publish the period or how it was measured.
What is missing matters as much as what is there. The message gives no dates, products, platforms or budget, and Sharma says Xbox's priorities do not change. For people who play on Xbox, nothing changes today. The labs.xbox.com site only offers an email form for updates.
Two gaps remain. A colleague of Sharma's named Scott put the group together, and the official text gives neither his last name nor his title. And although the message does not mention artificial intelligence, Paul Thurrott links it to the AI-assisted coding tools released in recent weeks. That is his reading, not a position stated by Xbox.
