Despite ongoing skepticism around Microsoft’s new leadership and concerns on increasing AI usage in more areas regarding developing games, new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma and new Xbox Chief Content Officer Matt Booty have assured (during a recent interview with Windows Central) that the Xbox ecosystem that players know and love will not get compromised by AI slop and there’s no pressure internally in Microsoft on developers to use AI.
“I think that with any new technology, it brings possibilities as a tool, but even more important, especially now – we need to draw lines on what we won’t do,” said Sharma. “That’s what I attempted to do when I shared my opening letter. I will not flood our ecosystem with slop.”
“We won’t have careless output, we won’t have derivative work. I deeply believe in the words that I shared previously there.”
All of that definitely sound hopeful and reassuring, and means that Xbox will still be what it is essentially.
Matt Booty also stated that the role AI could play in the company regarding their direction is strictly complimentary in nature:
“What I hear throughout our studios: it is the people, our artists, our coders, the writers – they’re doing the creative work. In my experience, any time there’s a new technology, what happens is there’s a need for more specialists, new specialists. It raises the bar on what the expectations are for the quality of the games.”
And lastly, he clarified that there’s no initiative within Microsoft for AI push: “We’ve got no pressure from Microsoft, there are no directives on AI coming down,” said Booty. “Our teams are free to use any technologies that might be beneficial, whether it’s helping write code or check for bugs – things more in the production pipeline. At the end of the day as Asha said, we’re committed to art made by people. Technology is only in support of that.”
Their words certainly do a lot to ease the mind of players who were concerned about Xbox being sunsetted or anything like that, at least for now.
