Analysis: Microsoft’s Copilot for Gaming is a solution looking for a problem

Microsoft recently announced that it would bring the beta of a gaming-specific version of Copilot to the Xbox platform in April. The new Copilot for Gaming is meant as a constant companion for anyone playing on Xbox, which can offer tips or hints on demand.

That leads me to ask: why would I want to use this at all? What’s the actual target audience here?

As I said recently on the GeekWire Podcast, machine learning as a whole is at that familiar tech stage where most of the new projects are solutions in search of a problem. If you look at recent product lineups from places like CES, advocates of the technology are still hung up on can instead of should.

Copilot for Gaming, as it was presented to me, falls squarely into that zone. It’s an attempt to improve the hobby by removing many of its human elements, so you never have to stop playing a game in order to look anything up. Your Copilot can ostensibly offer advice on how to start a new game, look up hints online, or provide personalized coaching.

The examples of use from the press briefing included asking Copilot for tips on what character to play in Blizzard’s hero shooter Overwatch 2 and how to get started as a brand new Minecraft player.

A Microsoft representative told me that Copilot for Gaming “accesses public sources of information using the Bing search index and results, and provides tailored responses for the individual player based on its understanding of the player’s activity and the games they’re playing on the Xbox platform.”

In addition, Microsoft currently plans that Copilot’s advice will source “the most accurate game knowledge,” including working directly with game studios.

Off the top, unless the plan is that every Xbox game will provide direct integration with material that was written in-house at Microsoft, Copilot for Gaming is still Copilot and will still have problems with its overall accuracy. As per a recent study by the Columbia Journalism Review, Copilot is wrong more often than it’s right.

The Microsoft representative was sure to note that “it’s important to check AI results against other trusted sources of information.” If that’s the case, then why am I using Copilot for Gaming at all, especially when it’s taking much-needed web traffic away from actual humans who want to provide me with the same guidance?

To be fair, the feature that Microsoft’s team initially led with struck me as being the most potentially useful. You can use Copilot for Gaming to give you a reminder of where you were and what you were doing the last time you played a particular game.

When I was a kid, one of my favorite games was 1993’s Phantasy Star IV, which has something like this as a menu feature, where you can trigger short conversations between your characters to remind you what you’re supposed to be doing. I’ve wanted to see more of that ever since. Many games are long and/or complicated enough that if you have to step away from them for a few days, you’ll have forgotten enough about the storyline or mechanics that you might as well start over. Having some kind of built-in refresher would be great.

The rest of Copilot for Gaming, however, strikes me as another example of an AI project with a reach that exceeds its grasp. Microsoft is asking players to trust an AI to provide them with accurate information at a point in time when AI-driven search is still distinctly flawed.

Full disclosure: I write strategy guides for sites like IGN, so I’m obviously biased. Even so, this whole project seems to be riding on the idea that players will happily sacrifice accuracy for convenience, and in my experience, such is not the case. The first time Copilot for Gaming gives someone incorrect gaming advice, it will take an unrecoverable PR hit.

Microsoft as a whole is smarter about the video game business than it often gets credit for being. Xbox may be stuck in a seemingly permanent third place position in the console market, but it’s got a few uncomplicated wins on its record, many of which revolve around its accessibility efforts.

The company recently announced the debut of its Xbox Adaptive Joystick, a new wired controller that’s intended for players with limited mobility, and which builds on its Adaptive Controller project.

You could also point to how the Xbox Game Pass is a great deal for budget-conscious players, particularly in conjunction with the Play Anywhere initiative, or Xbox’s history of outreach to the independent game developer community.

That’s part of what makes Copilot for Gaming frustrating. We’ve been on this train for a while, and we’re still regularly seeing AI researchers and developers trying to bring products to market that won’t work as advertised. The best case scenario for Copilot for Gaming is that it’s sort of helpful sometimes, at the price of removing yet more of the human element from the hobby. It’s a dumb move from a company that’s smarter than people think.