Xbox Launches ‘Xbox Labs’ to Experiment With AI-Driven Game Mods and Ports, With Scott Van Vliet in Charge
Xbox has created a new internal group called XBOX LABS, tasked with experimenting with the AI-driven tools that are already reshaping how games get built, modded, and played. Microsoft Gaming CEO Asha Sharma announced the team on October 13 in a note to staff, putting Xbox Chief Technology Officer Scott Van Vliet, who previously led Azure OpenAI and AI infrastructure work at Microsoft, in charge of running it.
A Response to a Modding Boom
The announcement follows a wave of viral fan projects that use AI coding assistants to decompile and rebuild existing games, including a version of Call of Duty reassembled to run inside a web browser, along with various crossover mashups blending characters and mechanics from entirely different franchises. Sharma argued Xbox has a natural stake in where this trend goes, pointing to players already spending more than 72 billion hours a year on Xbox games, by her estimate roughly five times the time the world spends writing code.
Asha Sharma became CEO of Microsoft Gaming in February, succeeding Phil Spencer, and now oversees the newly formed XBOX LABS team.
What the Team Is Actually For
XBOX LABS is described as a small group of game makers, engineers, and scientists whose job is to turn emerging ideas into things players and developers can actually use, from easier access to existing games to giving older titles new life and letting more players become creators themselves. The team says it will build in the open and share whatever tools it creates with the rest of the industry, judging its own success by whether more people end up playing and making games.
“I want our game makers to help shape what these new technologies make possible.”
Asha Sharma, Xbox CEO
Sharma was careful to frame LABS as additive rather than a pivot. Xbox’s stated priorities, including its hardware business and what the company calls its “4Cs,” aren’t changing, and the new group doesn’t replace the work already underway elsewhere at Xbox. It’s the latest in a string of new initiatives out of Xbox under Sharma, following the launch of the XP entertainment division just days earlier.
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