Xbox Plots a Catalogue of AI Games, And It’ll Probably Use Tech on PS5 – Push Square
GuestGuestLogin | Sign UpPush SquareGuestLogin or Sign UpNadella impressed with Microsoft’s new modelIn 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.”Muse technology “not a solution” for game preservation”Let’s just allow more people to play”The concerns around AI are only going to get stronger it seems, as the technology threatens to dilute human creativity, potentially through plagiarism. These models, let’s not forget, are trained on the work of real humans, whose efforts tend to go uncredited.But much like the metaverse and NFTs a few years back, massive companies like Microsoft are betting big on AI to drive investment from shareholders, who are all inevitably looking to latch onto the next big thing.[source dwarkeshpatel.com, via videogameschronicle.com]About Sammy BarkerAs the Editor of Push Square, Sammy has over 15 years of experience analysing the world of PlayStation, from PS3 through PS5 and everything in between. He’s an expert on PS Studios and industry matters, as well as sports games and simulators. He also enjoys RPGs when he has the time to dedicate to them, and is a bit of a gacha whale.Comments 45I’m so glad i have nothing to do with Xbox these days and I won’t be playing any of this AI slop that makes it over to Playstation.I think it’s inevitable that games would go in this direction, although it may seem unpopular right now. Imagine our grandchildren simply prompting an AI with what they’re in the mood to play and it cooks up something on the fly. In the meantime, this is why we rely on you, Push Square, to tell us what’s actually worth playing until they get it right.Lies, lies and more lies to hype up lame big tech vaporware. Happy Monster Hunter week to all!In a vacuum, the tech is impressive. Positioned as an alternative to legitimate game development, it’s embarrassingly archaic. Positioned as a means of game preservation, it’s a joke (preserving code is a part of game preservation, after all).I could imagine this helping on the development side of things… I guess. If you can drag a JPEG into the game and let AI implement it, that could save some time. But I can’t imagine shipping it without recoding by hand to fine tune it. So it could certainly help in prototyping. Until we see it produce any actual product, though, it’s usefulness in deep development is doubtful.I still think big techs complete jump into making AI a thing will backfire badly.I always follow a simple rule with tech becoming ubiquitous: how easily can you explain it to a child or senior citizen.Cloud? You can store information and access it anywhere.Easy to understand the use case.AI? You can ask your computer questions but cannot trust the answers it gives. Oh and it has made simple search terrible.Useless.@Excess It’s not inevitable if we vote with our wallets and tell these companies we don’t want them. In prototyping? Maybe AI could be useful. But literally anything more than that is grounds for swearing off that company’s first-party offerings entirely.Queue the “ai slop” comments. Oops, too late. But i do find it funny they are training it on a failed game lolWhat this technology is gonna do in relatively immediate future (and it has been worded carefully to be able to be used for this without lying to the “fans”), is fire a whole bunch of artists and turn a senior artist into a “senior AI prompter”. Instead of manually creating beautiful levels and biomes, AI will be prompted to generate decent/mediocre ones for a fraction of the cost. Looking at the GP model and offerings over last 4-5 years (they did have good last few months though) that outcome is very much on brand. I’ll be skipping, thank you very much. I have limited gaming time and I’ll be using only for the best experiences.This one seems more for the shareholders, just like buzz words of yesteryear”NFT’s”, “microtransactions”, “GaaS”, “Live service”, “Battlepass” …So is AI being regulated at all, or are we just slowly willing our own end?@Balie3000 no Facebook or meta got away with infringement on everything they trained there ai on its pretty much not illegal to take people’s stuff anymore wither or not it’s virtually or physically in America anymore@Balie3000 nope, almost zero regulation. We are still in the “steal now, be sorry later” phase most new technologies go through before they either cause a catastrophe or market stabilizes (typically the former).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.” is translated as “Wow! Money printing machine! You have money printing machine! Now we will release milions of so called games for free and those idiots (customers) will buy as crazy!” “Exactly…”So much misinformation from people calling this “AI slop”, it has the potential to be, but many games you play right now ALREADY use AI.It’s not whether AI is used (it is in many games) it is HOW it is used.I regularly utilize various forms of AI in my daily operations, and as a result, our business has experienced significant growth. Ultimately, it all comes down to how effectively you leverage these technologies.@themightyant There is a HUGE difference between AI and Generative AI, which is the slop people are referring to.The video here does seem to refer to Generative AI to come up with things “quicker”. But this will in general just mean derivative of other games and so we will end up with even more copy paste games or slop than we already do.This is a race to the bottom and will devalue gaming and the hard work that artists put into it every dayGenerative AI is just a tool. What will separate good developers from bad ones is how that tool is utilised.@themightyant While I hate saying the term slop, this time it does fit like a glove.I agree that AI is a tool and it depends on how people will use it, and Microsoft is using it the wrong way.With the money and time needed to create games nowadays, AI is definitely needed. People are constantly complaining about the long wait between releases and you can’t have it both ways.This is an odd story where it is hard to see where the marketing ends and the true potential of the tech starts.I did wonder if over time porting a game with AI might be a thing. Not in the way described above bit literally taking code for a game on one platform and re-writing it for another – this doesn’t feel like a huge leap to me with enough data put into the system and would be amazing for making games accessible for use on future hardware.Oh Bleeding Edge… that was certainly one of the games of all time.@SMJ no thanks. I rather wait than play AI generated games. Quality win over quantity for me.And btw,i have tons others indie/AA/AAA games to playI still need to see proof of actual A.I in 2025!! So far it’s only programs that are doing what they are told in the code. Actual A.I = Artificial intelligence. I see no proof of actual “intelligence” in todays programs. But they are great at copying others work without permission.
If we all could stop calling it “Artificial intelligence” until the “intelligence”-part is actually true.
Todays so called A.I is more or less a “random code generator” within set frames and not much actual intelligence.@UltimateOtaku91 you think playstation isn’t going to use ai?If it makes game development easier, quicker and cheaper im all for it@Toot1st at least as of now, and most likely while the generative AI models we currently use are not replaced with different approach, this is not true. But it is being marketed and sold (very well) as if it was.@CielloArc how are they using it “in the wrong way”? In what way was anything they said in the video “AI slop”?While “AI Slop” DOES exist – some AI asset flip games on the stores for example, that have very little creative endeavour – these are the TINY minority and not what Microsoft is talking about here at all.Most of the time any says “AI Slop” it’s such a lazy, uniformed catch-all that it only highlights the person using the term’s lack of knowledge on the subject.@DenzelDM There is nothing wrong with Generative AI in theory. Again it depends HOW it is used… and legally / morally how it was trained. Much like procedural generation, Speed Tree or many other algorithms and middleware that have been used for years in games to speed up development, it’s value will depend on HOW it is used.Regarding this announcement specifically, did you watch the whole video? What part of this screams “AI slop” or gen-AI for content creation?I think for our studio here at Ninja theory, it is not about using AI to generate content, but it’s actually about creating workflows and approaches that allow our team here of 100 creative experts to do more, to go further, to iterate quicker, to ideate quicker, to bring the ideas in their heads to life in a tangible form for others to see…We don’t intend to use this technology for creation of content. I think the interesting aspect for us is, how can we use technology like this to make the process of making games quicker and easier for our talented team, so that they can really focus on the things that I think is really special about games, which is that HUMAN creativity. Games to me are really… creators using the medium of games to talk to their audience. To communicate through the medium of interactivity and that is core to game creation. So what is important is we have the human creativity, but through this technology we can empower them to do more and push their own dreams further than they have been before.Of course those are just words, i’m more interested in judging actions, but they are saying all the right things, to show this is specifically NOT what most people fear from AI, the lack of a human touch.Last time I remember ai being used for a backwards port was with the gta trilogy and it didn’t end up so goodI still hold that using A.I. could have some really cool outcomes in the gaming space with regard to developers being able to quickly playtest ideas, but everything has a caveat. It should only supplement development, not replace.@Toot1st If they use it to replace creativity then yes I would avoid their games as well, or even if they use AI for voice acting or character models. All AI is going to do is kill creativity and create more layoffs.I have no particular concern as every company in the world will be looking to use this tool effectively to improve productivity and outcomes. It’s how you use this tool that’s important, and I didn’t see any red flags in the video..Immediately reaching for a pitchfork the moment the term is used actually undermines genuine concerns which will simply get drowned out in the noise.Interesting times!!!If this happens, this will mark the end of my time having anything to do with Xbox and likely Microsoft as a whole. It would be a shame too, I like Windows, but this crap has gone far enough.@Toot1st If you think companies will pass their savings on to us, consumers, instead of using it to pad their bottom lines and make their share prices tick up and their bonuses fatter, you are extremely naive. We will see no direct benefit. Guaranteed.Titntin wrote:Immediately reaching for a pitchfork the moment the term is used actually undermines genuine concerns which will simply get drowned out in the noise.👏👏👏 Well said. This is my concern too. There certainly are concerns about AI’s use but if we kneejerk respond that all AI is bad (it isn’t) then we aren’t ever going to address those.It’s embarassing vapourware being pushed conveniently close to the start of the financial year. Microsoft can get stuffed pushing this. The sooner generative AI is slaughtered by copyright law, the better. So you’re telling me that passion projects by fans they pour time and effort into are taken down instantly but there’s no way that this model was trained on copyrighted material and so could be sniped the same way? It’s tw*ts in suits’ wet dream, a way to reduce staff despite the obvious drop in quality and generate artificial growth. No wonder the government are pushing it so hard.@Titntin @themightyant Preach!Put Elon and Phil in charge of everything! I’ll use the fire to pop my popcorn as I watch.There’s so much talk about, and work being put into, generative AI and although I find it interesting, it’s likely a long way from where it would need to be in order for it to be worth much.I’m far more interested in the use of AI to add dynamic interaction to characters in games, which I haven’t heard anyone discussing. The ability to define a character’s traits and have AI effectively respond in-character to any prompt could make a huge impact on games, especially in the RPG space, and it’s a technology that is essentially ready right now.@symmetrian Cant wait for to bring AI into bringing us better writing by using the work if other people.Good thing is there will stay even more money with the rich they will totally not abuse this no wonder Phil is smiling so much.I love it how he smiles and is happy that he can bring that extra cash to the investors we know these poor people need the extra cash.It generates nothing though i rehashed work from others. You could always pay better wages and impact the lives of the working classes.@themightyant With big Corp there is only one way to train it as cheap as possible and morals dont be silly.Again AI does not create anything it rehashes the work of others which they are not compemsated for.Just looks how Google didnt directly wants to tell how they train their AI. In the end it will be faster and cheaper plus it will be more of the same stuff.@Flaming_Kaiser Artists rehash ideas that they have seen before, whether consciously or sub-consciously, and don’t compensate those other artists, it’s called inspiration.Art builds upon art, and the ideas of others, there are virtually no new ideas only different mash ups of existing ones, some of which end up being more novel or interesting and in turn may inspire other artists to take an idea further.As for training them THIS is definitely an area that needs legislation, and quickly. Though if a human can play a game, say Baldurs Gate 3, and learn from it, improve their game from it’s learnings, why shouldn’t AI be able to do the same? If it helps creatives make better games i’m all for it.@amatmulisha That’s fine. But AAA games will need AI. The budgets are sky high and the risk for the studios making them is that they could close if their games don’t sell tens of millions in a short space if time. That’s just the way the industry is right now.@themightyant They are using it as a “pre-vis for games”, but games don’t work the same as movies do and it can lead to games looking alike gameplay wise.It’s embarrassing how clueless Satya is when it comes to gaming. His enthusiasm to push AI in the most absurd ways is sickening.AI is undoubtedly the kind of disruptive tech that will cause a deep societal restructuring, maybe even deeper than the internet did. But the technocrat looks at it and immediately sees all kinds of really bad use cases.For now, generative AI is transformative as a tool for quick prototyping, just like chatGPT is quite useful for initial document drafts. But to imply that “soon” these models will be employed to generate the final game (or even parts of it) is the perfect recipe for absolutely soulless games. 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