During the talks at the Peli International Council of California summit, Microsoft Games CEO Phil Spencer stated that the company’s current use of artificial intelligence was concentrated in the areas of safety protection and Xbox Live content auditing, and that it was not forced to enter the creative development process. At the same time, he stressed that the Xbox brand had made breakthroughs in the historically difficult Japanese market.
According to IGN reports, Spencer points out that AI technology currently has a major voice and word-talking review function, which “ensures compliance with the content of the dialogue, in particular through the strict management of children’s protected accounts and their clients, through the control powers established by parents or guardians”. He stated that this was “not the brightest application of AI, but that I was convinced of the way forward”. With regard to the wider use of AI technology, Spencer stated that the company delegated decision-making to business teams: “I fully respect team autonomy at the creative level. Experience has shown that when tools are effective in improving efficiency, creative teams naturally adopt them. Any executive order that you must use a tool is fundamentally contrary to success. We provide the tools to allow their natural penetration to evolve.”
Despite Spencer ‘ s concern about AI-enabled content discovery (e.g., recommendations based on user history), he made it clear that there were no plans to produce its input content. “In the production chain — an area of concern to the majority — no targets have been set in our development planning. I am more concerned with the upswing in the pace of innovation and the possibility that the next breakthrough will now lead to more mistakes. Our AI applications are now more focused on operational support than on creative development.” This position stands in stark contrast to the cooperation announced this week between EA and StabilityAI. Intra-EA staff members have recently revealed resistance to executive instructions from management requiring full use of AI. The Financial Times reported that achieving cost reductions through AI is the core basis for the consortium ‘ s proposal to acquire EA, including the Saudi Public Investment Fund.
In another TGS dialogue, which has already been reported in Famict, Spencer focused on the company’s commitment to the Japanese market — the Microsoft Games Studio, which will be the new issuer of Ninja’s Long Sword 4 and Koshima Soo-soo, and indicated that the region’s user base has grown. “The length of the Xbox game in the Japanese market increased by about 20 per cent over the past year”, he revealed, “This data covers the mainframe, PC and cloud game platforms. These figures show that the momentum of growth will continue as long as we continue to provide quality content to Japanese players.” Taking into account the historically low market performance of Xbox in the region, this growth was not easy and benefited from the expansion of the Microsoft definition of “Xbox”. The company ‘ s latest move towards the non-borderization of the platform was the announcement that the halo series would land on the PS5 platform.
