Xbox CTO Scott Van Vliet is leading Xbox Labs, a small group of game makers, engineers, and scientists that CEO Asha Sharma introduced on October 13, 2026. The team will explore technology for players and developers, build in the open, learn from how people use its work, and share tools across the industry. Xbox says success means more people playing and creating.
Sharma connected Labs to community projects that decompile and rebuild games for hardware they were never designed to support. Examples include adapting Windows PC builds to Apple Silicon and bringing games to browsers through WebAssembly and WebGPU, which is nearing 90% global browser support. Other projects have remixed major games into the source code of different titles.
AI-assisted coding has helped drive many of these recompilations, though not all rely on AI. Sharma said coding became the first major workload for agents because they can write, run, and test software, and games share many of those traits. Van Vliet previously served as Microsoft’s CVP for Azure OpenAI and AI Infrastructure, but Xbox has not identified Labs as an AI initiative.
Xbox frames Labs around three goals: making games easier to access, giving older titles new life, and helping more players become creators or co-creators. Sharma floated source-code rewrites and full-engine ports as possibilities, not confirmed projects. She acknowledged that these outcomes could challenge existing business models while describing them as good for players.
Today we're standing up XBOX LABS (https://t.co/wzXPNnCmI6). Here is the note that I sent to the team:
Team,
The first video games emerged some 75 years ago. In the time since, there have been booms and busts, but every year there are more great games to play, more devices to…— ASHA (@asha_shar) October 13, 2026
Xbox says players spend more than 72 billion hours a year in its games, roughly five times the estimated time spent writing code worldwide. The company wants its game makers to help shape what new technologies can do and share the tools they build with developers across the industry. Xbox also points to 25 years of making games as experience the team can bring to that work.
Sharma said Labs will not replace Xbox’s existing priorities, including the 4Cs, making games, its hardware, and responsible stewardship of its intellectual property and communities. The Xbox Labs website currently offers an email signup, with updates promised once experiences are ready. The announcement did not describe a console early-access program for unreleased Xbox games, so playable previews are not a confirmed feature.
What would you most want Xbox Labs to make possible for players or developers? For more on the community experiments and tools behind the initiative, stay connected with us on X, Bluesky, YouTube, Instagram, Steam, and Telegram.
