“Presenting Muse”
- by Ben Kerry
Recently, Microsoft has unveiled ‘Muse AI‘, a cutting-edge artificial intelligence program that it believes “could significantly transform how we preserve and enjoy classic games in the years to come”.
Muse is an ongoing project at Xbox, and it appears to hold tremendous potential for the future of gaming. What we are particularly interested in most, however, is how this might assist in game preservation—a point emphasized by Xbox in its recent blog post regarding the AI toolkit.
“Today, many classic games tied to outdated hardware are no longer accessible to most players. Because of this advancement, we are investigating the possibility of Muse to revive older game titles from our studios and optimize them for any device. We believe this could dramatically alter how we preserve and enjoy classic games in the future, making them available to more gamers.”
“To think that beloved games lost to the passage of time and hardware advancements could one day be playable on any screen with Xbox is an exciting prospect for us.”
The announcement further states that Muse may have considerably broader implications beyond simple game preservation. Microsoft states that these AI tools could also be utilized in the game development process itself—allowing studios to “infuse new experiences” while creating new projects or enhancing existing games.
“Another opportunity we are looking into is how Muse can assist game developers in prototyping fresh gameplay experiences during the creative process and introducing new content—taking beloved games and allowing our developers to add new experiences for players to enjoy, or even involving you in the creation process.”
So far, Xbox developer Ninja Theory has been working on this AI initiative, experimenting with its 2020 shooter Bleeding Edge to see what Muse can achieve with it. The announcement isn’t overly clear on how and why Bleeding Edge is under consideration here, but the team does provide a more detailed examination—including some quick gameplay gifs—throughout the complete blog post.
This is a rather exciting announcement coming from Xbox.