Xbox launches Labs group to explore new gaming technology

• The group will include game makers, engineers and scientists.
• Experiments will explore new ways to access, play and create games.
• Xbox says players spend more than 72bn hours a year playing its games.

Xbox has established Xbox Labs, a new group of game makers, engineers and scientists tasked with exploring new technologies and finding ways to make games easier to access and create.

In a message to staff, Xbox leader Asha Sharma said the team would experiment with emerging ideas, build tools in the open and measure success by whether more people play and create games.

The announcement came alongside the creation of XP, a new Xbox division focused on expanding its gaming franchises beyond games.

New possibilities

Xbox Labs will explore emerging technologies, with Sharma highlighting recent examples of games being rebuilt to run on hardware they were not originally designed for, including Windows PC games being translated to Apple Silicon or ported to browsers through WebAssembly and WebGPU.

“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," said Sharma in a post. 

She added: “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."

The group will share the tools it develops with game developers across the industry. However, Xbox said its core priorities remain unchanged, including making great games, supporting its hardware, protecting its intellectual property and serving its communities.