Xbox could use AI to preserve classic games as CEO Phil Spencer dreams of making retro titles "portable to any platform"

As Microsoft debuts a new AI model capable of generating gameplay clips, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer is excited about the possibility of using AI to aid Xbox's game preservation efforts.

In a conversation with Ninja Theory studio head Dom Matthews and Microsoft Research Game Intelligence team lead Katja Hofmann, Spencer talked about the potential of using AI models that have been trained on gameplay and using them on older games.

"One of the things we care a lot about at Xbox is game preservation, and I think about an opportunity to have models learn about older games, games that were maybe tied to unique pieces of hardware, where the engine on that hardware, time will erode the amount of hardware that's out there that can actually play game," Spencer says. "But you can imagine a world where from gameplay data and video that a model can learn old games and really make them portable to any platform."

"I think that's really exciting, we talk about game preservation as an activity for us, and these models and their ability to learn completely how a game plays without the necessity of the original engine running on the original hardware opens up a ton of opportunity," Spencer adds.

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Reaction: A great use for new technology

Setting aside for a single moment that I'm a naturally skeptical person when it comes to the world of claimed AI advancements, this is a far more compelling use case for generative AI in games than anything else I've heard floated before. Having an AI model train on an older game and using it to aid efforts for porting said game to vastly newer hardware is genuinely interesting, and I'll be curious to see what (if any) progress Microsoft and Xbox make here as time marches on.

More of this kind of thinking, please. I don't want to see anyone working in games replaced by AI; I want the worlds, the stories, the art, and the writing that comes from human creativity.