Everybody hates Xbox’s AI game preservation idea

Game preservation is a hot-button issue right now. As time moves on, more and more games become inaccessible to gamers through legitimate means. Unless the copywriter holders choose to spend the time and effort necessary to make their games run on modern machines, retro titles can become completely lost. Those who try illegitimate means such as emulators risk getting into legal trouble. What’s the solution? If you find one, let us all know. In the meantime, Xbox has stuck its foot in its mouth by implying that its newly announced AI model, Muse, may be able to help preserve games. Phil Spencer was probably hoping that this would garner them some positive buzz for their new AI model, but the reception was anything but.

In an article on its website, Xbox stated, “Today, countless classic games tied to aging hardware are no longer playable by most people. Thanks to this breakthrough, we are exploring the potential for Muse to take older back catalogue games from our studios and optimize them for any device. We believe this could radically change how we preserve and experience classic games in the future and make them accessible to more players.”

Due to the liberal use of corporate jargon and buzzwords in the announcement, it was hard for the layperson to even understand what the implication even meant. How could this AI model preserve games? Could it analyse old code and remake games from scratch? Would it simply upscale the graphics, similar to how some old movies are being upscaled? With no clear explanation of how the model could even work to “preserve” games, it was hard not to come away from the piece fearing that your favourite retro title would be fed into the AI model and spat out all wrong. Public comment on social media was swift, and almost universally negative.

“This is like saying a photocopy of a painting is “preservation.” It’s misleading and an insult to the thankless work we archivists do.” wrote Video Game History Foundation founder Frank Cifaldi on BlueSky.

The organisation’s director Phil Salvadore had an even snappier way to put it: “Generative AI video is a great way to preserve video games, in the sense that mirages are a great source of water.”

It’s not hard to see why the sentiment is so negative: AI is currently infamous for producing derivative and unpleasant artwork, generating incorrect information, costing artists and copywriters their jobs, and being extremely energy inefficient. AI is already being used to upscale the quality of some older movies, and some critics haven’t liked the results.

Dr Michael Cook, a game designer and AI researcher, wrote a useful blog post in the wake of the announcement, breaking down some of the more complex parts of Xbox’s article and explaining that the AI model could not be used as a game preservation tool; but that was never what it was designed for, anyway. “This paper is not about AI generating games, but a lot of people thought it was and tweeted about how much they hated this idea.”

He wrote: “The system has internalised how people play this game, and also how they interact with things it already knows about (like jump pads). The premise is that a designer could then make an adjustment to a level and ask “how would this scenario play out?” and see some video showing what the model thinks would happen.” In other words, the model is designed to help developers predict how new design elements might affect their game. But Cook went on to say that the model is not a solution for game preservation. “They can provide plausible reconstructions of something, which we can take with a huge pinch of salt and a load of caveats, and enjoy as a sideshow to actual preservation efforts maybe. But preservation is not just about gameplay, and it’s not just about video.”

Microsoft Research worked with Xbox studio Ninja Theory to test Muse, calling the resulting paper a “breakthrough”.