Edit: disregard below. Did some more digging into how it works and they are not recompiling or using previous assets, they are in fact regenerating these games whole cloth. What a colossal waste of resources. Spencer and Microsoft are being dumb lol

Ok, I’m pretty anti-Phil at this point. But this post seems to be doing a lot of…let’s call it “uncharitable” interpretation. And I get it, he doesn’t deserve the benefit of the doubt. But let’s look at the quotes here:

“Today, countless classic games tied to aging hardware are no longer playable by most people,” Xbox says in its announcement post. “Thanks to this breakthrough, we are exploring the potential for Muse to take older back catalog 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.”

“One of the things we care a lot about at Xbox is game preservation,” Phil Spencer says in a video accompanying the announcement. “And I think about an opportunity to have models learn about older games, games that were maybe tied to unique pieces of hardware where that engine on that hardware… Time will erode the amount of hardware that’s out there that can actually play a game.”

I initially read this as “AI can take older games that were relegated to older hardware and make them compatible on modern systems so players don’t need the hardware anymore.”

Does emulation solve this? Yeah usually. Does he have some cheap money grab planned? Totally possible and wouldn’t be surprising. But frankly I don’t know. I’m not quite sure I’m buying in to the axe grinding this article is engaging in.

That being said Microsoft would definitely do better to put their efforts towards supporting emulation and public acquisition of roms. Completely agree with that sentiment. But I think they’re kind of bending the premise to shout about that (again valid and one I agree with) point here.

I’m not sure where this “facsimile” talking point is even coming from if I’m being completely honest. If I glossed over it please share a quote with me. I am perfectly comfortable going back to blaming Phil Spencer lol

[–] brsrklf@jlai.lu 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

They present Muse as a "generative AI model of a videogame" that you'd train to "learn about older games". Which seems a very bold claim to begin with.

If this is anything like that, this is not a way to preserve the original game, it's an attempt at reproducing (parts of?) it. And since generative AI is involved, there is no reason to believe it will be a faithful recreation.

Of course this could all be marketing bullshit, and for all we know their AI is just another coding assistant AI that they might use to create remakes. And then they'll only be as faithful as the team making it can or will do it, as has always been the case with remakes.

Anyway, remaking is not preserving.

Edit : was a bit slow trying to make my point, seeing now your edit. Yep, that's exactly what I got from this too.

[–] LandedGentry@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 day ago

No worries! Sorry you went to all that effort just to see my edit after lol