Xbox executive Asha Sharma hinted at harnessing the power of generative AI when creating games, in a memo released this afternoon.
The memo, titled 25 Years of Xbox, traces Microsoft’s growth from its humble beginnings to the thousands-strong company it is today. But it is Sharma’s comments at the end of the memo that are particularly interesting.
While discussing what the next 25 years might bring, Sharma lamented that “too many ideas never become games” and that “too many games are not what their creators imagined.” “For decades, this has been the inevitable trade-off between ambition,” she wrote. “We need to change this.”
Sharma continued: “Throughout human history, the scale of what we could create was determined by the people, capital and resources available to us. This relationship begins to break down. A single person will soon be able to wield abilities that once required entire nations. 1982.”
There’s no explicit mention of generative AI here, but the language is suggestive: “a single person will soon be able to wield capabilities that once required entire nations.” Additionally, Asha’s memo follows last month’s announcement of an Xbox Labs initiative that also appeared to be based on generative AI, although she avoided the phrase specifically.
This is of course no surprise. Microsoft, as a company at large, is all about generative AI, with Copilot, and Sharma’s background at Microsoft is in AI. But it’s an area she’s avoided talking too enthusiastically about since being hired as head of Xbox earlier this year. At the time, Sharma said she had “zero tolerance for bad AI,” and so much else happened in the months that followed — including a massive restructuring resulting in the loss of thousands of Xbox jobs — that the topic of generative AI fell to the back burner. Perhaps we are now seeing the seeds germinate.
We have requested clarification from Microsoft.
Gn tech
