We have now received our strongest indication yet of what Xbox Labs may be “cooking up” for players, courtesy of Xbox chief technology officer Scott Van Vliet. The executive shared a video on X that concludes with Halo 3 booting up inside what appears to be the Microsoft Edge web browser. In fact, the option to play the beloved FPS with mouse and keyboard even shows up as a prompt.
Van Vliet mentioned that he was going for “retro vibes” in the social media post, and he also tagged Xbox CEO Asha Sharma. Intriguingly, neither executive mentions Halo 3 booting up inside the browser; instead, they focus on the return of the Xbox Blades dashboard. That user interface from roughly two decades ago is a fan-favorite.
Xbox Labs was unveiled last week, strongly implying a push into AI gaming without saying those exact words. In general, the past couple of months have seen a big wave of vibe-coded ports for browsers, such as The Simpsons: Hit & Run and old-school Grand Theft Automat titles. There even are remixes where people mash up Minecraft and Elden Ring, for instance.
With that in mind, Xbox Labs focusing on past console libraries to bring to browsers makes a ton of sense. Being able to play your Xbox 360 games on a browser—especially if saves can transfer over via the cloud—would be a welcome benefit. Obviously, Van Vliet teases that we could even pick our preferred 360 dashboard to boot up those titles.
Xbox isn’t the only big-name company dipping its toes into vibe coding. Fortnite developer Epic Jocuri is focused on “maximum AI acceleration,” according to Epic CEO Tim Sweeney. The Unreal Engine maker even vibe-coded a new Epic Jocuri Launcher earlier this month, complete with all sorts of problems.
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