In a message marking the 25th anniversary of the first Xbox console, Xbox CEO Asha Sharma predicts that the future of gaming will look much like its beginning, "when a small team with a big idea could change how the world plays." And even though the term never actually appears in her post, yeah, I'm pretty sure she's talking about AI.
Sharma's message kicks off with a blast from the early days of Microsoft, beginning with a look at Microsoft Adventure, an adaptation of Colossal Cave "that looked more like MS-DOS than an early version of Minecraft," and the first-ever Microsoft staff photo that showcases some absolutely spectacular hair. From there it's a quick trip through Microsoft Flight Simulator, Quake, DirectX, and then in 2001, the original Xbox.
Naturally, there's a tribute to the "generations of employees, studios, developers, and partners" who helped create and grow Xbox, and the people who have played on various generations of consoles over the years.
"Since joining Xbox, I've heard stories of friendships that began over a session and lasted a lifetime, of people who met the person they would marry, and of parents now sharing the games they grew up on with their children," Sharma writes. "I've also heard about people who are no longer with us, and how much those hours spent playing together still mean to those who love them. Ultimately, this is why we exist."
From there, Sharma offers thoughts on the future of Xbox, and this is where I think it gets interesting: After comparing the size and capabilities of the original Microsoft Flight Simulator with the 2024 edition, she continues, "While modern games demonstrate the heights of human craft in ways unimaginable just decades ago, the cost, resources, and risk required to create them have grown just as dramatically. As a result, too many ideas never become games, and too many games fall short of what their creators imagined. For decades, this has been the unavoidable tradeoff of ambition. We must change this."
How exactly that change will come about goes unspecified, but my guess? She's talking about AI.
"Throughout human history, the scale of what we could create was determined by the people, capital, and resources we could command. That relationship is beginning to break," Sharma writes.
"A single person will soon be able to wield capabilities that once required entire nations. A small team will be able to build worlds that today demand hundreds of developers and hundreds of millions of dollars. And our largest studios will be able to pursue ambitions as far beyond today’s games as Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 is from its first entry in 1982."
Okay, but...
The explosive rise in the cost of game development is undeniable. The pioneering open-world sci-fi RPG Starflight was literally made by five guys; its distant descendant Mass Effect: Andromeda credits 14 people for working on "audio design" alone. Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick summed up the situation quite aptly earlier this year, calling big-budget game development "a high-stakes game for big boys only"; the development budget of the upcoming Grand Theft Auto 6 is being talked about in terms of billions.
Despite Sharma's optimistic presentation, though, I'm not entirely confident that an AI-powered future where one person—or even a few—can do what currently takes hundreds is really a desirable outcome.
Alongside questions of ethics and artistic vision, there are also very pragmatic concerns about the long-term future of the games industry itself. Because really, the embrace of AI—not just at Xbox, but everywhere—is about cutting jobs. Bethesda had nine concept artists working on Starfield: What happens when somebody in an office decides they can get the same job done, pretty much, with two guys hammering out prompts? Maybe even just one? Quarterly profits and shareholder return may go up, but I doubt we'll be saying the same about the quality of the games we play.
Sharma concluded by writing that she believes "the future of gaming will look more like its beginning, when a small team with a big idea could change how the world plays." I would argue that small teams are already doing that—the big, billion-dollar blockbusters that have prompted these worries seem far more committed to merely giving us more of what we've already got.
