Xbox Plots a Catalogue of AI Games, And It'll Probably Use Tech on PS5

In case you missed the news last week, Xbox has been training its artificial intelligence technology on Ninja Theory flop Bleeding Edge, in an effort to eventually make games using generative AI.

The company’s failed to communicate a compelling use case for the project it’s naming Muse, but it’s suggested it could be used to help game makers prototype different gameplay concepts quicker – or, bizarrely, boss Phil Spencer said it could be employed as a way to preserve games. Industry professionals have quickly spoken against that pie-in-the-sky idea.

Now, perhaps in an effort to excite shareholders and raise investor capital, CEO Satya Nadella has revealed that Microsoft plans to “have a catalogue of games that will use the technology”.

Speaking on the Dwarkesh Podcast, he said: “One thing that we wanted to go after was, using gameplay data, can you actually generate games that are both consistent and then have the ability to generate the diversity of what that game represents and then are persistent to user mods, right? So that’s what this is.”

In the concept video, an AI generated version of Bleeding Edge is shown running in 2005 YouTube resolution at around 10fps. The player is then able to use the model to drag in an object and place it inside the game, making it an interactable element.

Nadella explained that his company is going to train the AI on more software, and incorporate its features into its games.

“We’re going to have a catalogue of games soon that we will start using these models, or we’re going to train these models to generate and then start playing them,” he exclaimed.

With Microsoft now transitioning to third-party publisher, you can bet any of this technology it actually uses will end up in PS5 games, so look forward to that.

While the rest of the world will remain sceptical about the results, Nadella simply can’t contain his excitement.

He beamed: “When Phil Spencer first showed it to me, where he had an Xbox controller and this model basically took the input and generated the output based on the input and it was consistent with the game [that was] a massive moment of ‘wow’. It’s kind of like the first time we saw ChatGPT complete sentences or Dolly draw or Sora, this is kind of one such moment.”