Microsoft has shocked everyone by announcing that they are bringing Copilot to the Xbox consoles for gaming. This was revealed at the recent Game Developers Conference panels alongside a bunch of other updates for the future of Xbox in the gaming space.
The news was reported by GamesRadar first, and then went on to shock the rest of the internet, all of whom already have a bad taste for AI in general. The new head of Xbox, Asha Sharma, on social media tried to warm up to gaming fans right after her role was formally revealed.
But it seems like the future of Xbox is tied to microslop, as people were already guessing. Microsoft is already notorious for shoving its AI tools down the throats of Windows users, and it’s going to do the same with its home console users.
More AI services are coming to Xbox and gaming
Sonali Yadav, the AI product manager at Xbox and Microsoft, disclosed at the Game Developers Conference that the company will be going ahead with Gaming Copilot for the future and current generation of Xbox consoles.
“And we will continue to bring it to more services that players are playing,” She added, according to the report. Though they never confirmed the exact console hardware, it’s easy to assume that the service will be making its way to Xbox Series S and X.
But that last part about bringing it to “more services” definitely implies that Microsoft is thinking of large-scale AI assistant implementation across the future of Xbox as a home console hardware. The future Xbox console, titled ‘Project Helix’, is going to be a PC and home console hybrid, so we can already see it easily fall into the program.
Microsoft has already launched beta versions of Copilot on its existing gaming platforms, such as mobile devices, Windows handhelds, and Windows gaming. The assistant can be pulled up at any time in order to help players when they get stuck during a playthrough or in various other ways.
Social media is disappointed with Xbox
Social media did not take this news lightly, nor were most of them too hopeful for the future of Xbox. Most are just taking the opportunity to dunk on the company once again with more memes.
Some of the users on Twitter/X made longer speculative posts discussing the downsides of implementing AI assistants in gaming. Pondering over the prospects of what the next step could be, which will probably be AI, ensuring that new gamers get curated recommendations.
It seems like Microsoft is at least not going to retire the Xbox hardware yet, but they also seem hell-bent on twisting one of the most important home consoles into an AI-powered hardware. The idea of a PC and Xbox hybrid system is fun, but the overreliance on tools like Copilot really keeps making it easy for gamers to keep using the term ‘microslop’ over and over again.
