Microsoft today revealed it’s creating a new team within Xbox, dedicated to exploring how “emerging ideas” can be turned into tech for players and developers. Called Xbox Labs, it consists of “a small group of game makers, engineers and scientists,” and will work on its experimental tech with transparency, says Xbox.
Xbox boss Asha Sharma revealed the new team in a memo to staff, citing as inspiration the many ways games and software have been made to run on hardware they didn’t originally work on. She added that, “These experiments challenge long-held assumptions about our industry: the tether between software and hardware, the boundary between creation and play, and how people discover and experience games.”
Xbox Labs will be run by Scott Van Vliet, Xbox’s CTO, according to the memo. The launching of this new division is not the only recent spin-off focusing on something other than game development: Sharma also recently announced the launch of Xbox’s XP, a new entertainment division run by Kayleen Walters.
Sharma said in the Xbox Labs announcement, “We’ve spent 25 years learning how to make great games, and I want our game makers to help shape what these new technologies make possible. As we learn, we’ll share the tools we build with developers across the industry, just as we always have… LABS gives us a way to explore new technology without abandoning the work already underway.”