Microsoft launches Xbox Labs to experiment with ports, remixes and new tech

Xbox has a new skunkworks. In a memo to employees on Tuesday, Xbox CEO Asha Sharma announced Xbox Labs, which she described as “a small group of game makers, engineers and scientists” turning emerging ideas into things players and developers can actually use.

The key points, per GeekWire:

• It’s led by Scott Van Vliet, who has been Xbox’s CTO since May.
• The team will build in the open, and Sharma says success will be measured “by whether more people are playing and creating.”
• She pointed to games being decompiled and rebuilt for hardware they were never made for, and PC games running on Apple Silicon or in a web browser. She called these good outcomes for players, “even when (and sometimes because) they challenge our existing business models.”

It comes during a tough stretch for Xbox. Last month it cut 268 roles in Xbox Game Studios as part of a restructuring announced in July, which calls for about 3,200 job cuts this fiscal year. Sharma says Labs won’t change Xbox’s existing priorities.

PPR take: It’s strange to hear a platform holder praise fan ports and decompilation projects. Whether that turns into real products or just a nice memo is still unknown, but it’s worth watching.