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John • Gaming In The Wild
@gaminginthewild.com

So this is basically an AI gamedev initiative, launched without saying "AI" a single time, right? Just one "agents" and some hand wavy "new technologies". Because Asha knows everyone hates AI. She's spent a year trying to reassure everyone her AI past doesn't mean Xbox's AI future. Until this.

news.xbox.comIntroducing XBOX LABSThis message was just sent to Team XBOX employees globally. Team, The first video games emerged some 75 years ago. In the time since, there have been booms and busts, but every year there are more gre...
John • Gaming In The Wild
@gaminginthewild.com

The "Reset" is revealed: slash human costs, lay off ~3,200 people, and launch an AI "Lab" to figure out how to make games without them. And see if you can structure the information so that people don't grok that's what happened.

John • Gaming In The Wild
@gaminginthewild.com

I'd put money on Asha's to-do list including something like "turn around gamer's negative perception of AI, because if they could only see...." etc. Expect her stance to go from "no AI slop" to "by leveraging new technologies, we were able to" within the first two years.

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John • Gaming In The Wild
@gaminginthewild.com

It's as if they think that the problem is people don't like the term "AI", rather than AI itself. And if they call it something else, surely we'll understand that it's good for us. Right? Right? Surely. But it's not about branding. Call it "agents", "new tech", whatever. We will still not like AI.

Remember 64 (Dave)
@remember64show.bsky.social

absolutely. I'd add that it's one of the reasons she was tapped to take the position in the first place. Microsoft was already going hard into AI and they needed a shepherd after a year of PR moves to try and convince us otherwise