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Xbox is officially embracing the chaos of AI-powered game ports

Retro gaming is going through a wild time at the moment, thanks to decompilations and recompilations that are letting gamers port classic titles to new devices, or merge code from two different games into a single new experience. Microsoft has witnessed skateboarding being modded into Call of Duty and Halo being played in a web browser, and the company is now officially embracing the chaos of this new AI-powered era of game modding.

由于反编译和重新编译技术的出现，复古游戏领域正经历着一段疯狂的时期。这些技术让玩家能够将经典游戏移植到新设备上，或者将两款不同游戏的代码合并成一种全新的体验。微软已经目睹了滑板模组被加入《使命召唤》，以及《光环》在网页浏览器中运行的案例。如今，该公司正正式拥抱这个由人工智能驱动的游戏模组新时代所带来的混乱。

Microsoft is putting together a new Xbox Labs group to explore the rapid emergence of these mods, many of which use AI models to help modders remix games in ways we’ve rarely seen before. Xbox Labs will be a “small group of game makers, engineers and scientists whose job is to turn emerging ideas into things our players and developers can experience,” says Xbox CEO Asha Sharma. “We’ll build in the open, learn from what people do, and measure success by whether more people are playing and creating.”

微软正在组建一个新的 Xbox Labs 小组，旨在探索这些模组的迅速兴起。其中许多模组利用人工智能模型，帮助模组制作者以我们前所未见的方式重构游戏。Xbox 首席执行官 Asha Sharma 表示，Xbox Labs 将是一个“由游戏制作人、工程师和科学家组成的小型团队，其工作是将新兴理念转化为我们的玩家和开发者能够体验到的成果。我们将公开构建，从人们的实践中学习，并以是否有更多人参与游戏和创作来衡量成功。”

Sharma thinks the experiments we’ve seen in recent weeks, where Windows PC builds have been translated to run on Apple Silicon or ported to run inside browsers, “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.”

Sharma 认为，我们在最近几周看到的实验——即 Windows PC 版本被转换至 Apple Silicon 上运行，或被移植到浏览器中运行——“挑战了我们行业长期以来持有的假设：软件与硬件之间的束缚、创作与游玩之间的界限，以及人们发现和体验游戏的方式。”

“While it is hard to predict the future of gaming, it is easy to see the possibilities in making great games easier to access, giving old games new life and allowing more players to become creators and co-creators,” says Sharma. “These are unmistakably good outcomes for players, even when (and sometimes because) they challenge our existing business models.”

“虽然很难预测游戏的未来，但我们很容易看到让优秀游戏更易于获取、赋予旧游戏新生，并让更多玩家成为创作者和共同创作者的可能性，”Sharma 说道。“对于玩家来说，这些无疑是好的结果，即使（有时正是因为）它们挑战了我们现有的商业模式。”

Modders are now doing the type of work that Microsoft has been doing for decades with its Xbox backward compatibility program, letting old games run on modern hardware. But they’re doing it without the business model restrictions that Microsoft is tied to. It’s starting to feel like we’re just a model or two away from even more breakthroughs that decouple more modern games from their intended hardware.

模组制作者们现在所做的工作，正是微软几十年来通过 Xbox 向下兼容计划所做的事情，即让旧游戏在现代硬件上运行。但他们是在没有微软所受的商业模式限制的情况下进行这些工作的。这让人感觉，我们距离实现更多突破、将现代游戏与其预定硬件解耦，可能只差一两个模型了。

Sharma clearly sees an opportunity here, particularly for AI agent use at Xbox. “I think Xbox has an important role to play here,” says Sharma. “Coding became the first major workload for agents because they can write, run, and test software. Games share many of those same properties, and people spend more than 72 billion hours a year playing XBOX games, roughly five times the estimated time spent writing code worldwide.”

Sharma 显然看到了其中的机遇，特别是在 Xbox 使用人工智能代理方面。“我认为 Xbox 在这里可以发挥重要作用，”Sharma 说。“编程成为了代理的首个主要工作负载，因为它们可以编写、运行和测试软件。游戏具有许多相同的属性，而且人们每年花费超过 720 亿小时玩 Xbox 游戏，这大约是全球编写代码预估时间的五倍。”

Xbox Labs is clearly a way for Microsoft to experiment with how AI will shape where games are played, and Xbox will share any tools and learnings with developers. The bigger question is how Microsoft will respond to decompiles and recompiles of games where modders take its precious IP and make it freely available. Modding is fun, but I can’t see Microsoft and other publishers seeing the fun side if modern console games start to appear where they shouldn’t.

Xbox Labs 显然是微软的一种尝试，旨在探索人工智能将如何塑造游戏的游玩方式，而 Xbox 也将与开发者分享任何工具和经验。更大的问题在于，当模组制作者拿走其宝贵的知识产权并使其免费可用时，微软将如何应对游戏的各种反编译和重新编译行为。模组制作很有趣，但如果现代主机游戏开始出现在不该出现的地方，我不认为微软和其他发行商会觉得这很有趣。