Brandon Stirrup, a senior business strategy manager at Xbox, posted a thread on X around 18 and 19 October 2026 arguing that Xbox already uses AI and that studios claiming otherwise are pretending. Within about a day his account was gone. Outlets differ on whether he deactivated or deleted it, and on whether the thread began on the 18th or the 19th.
“I'm happy to take the hit if it means hundreds at Xbox can stop pretending that they're not using AI. It's time to accept and move forward.”
Brandon Stirrup, Xbox senior business strategy manager, on X · pcgamer.com ↗
He said he had put together a rough game over a weekend with roughly three hours of active work, though he had never made a game before. He described it as "vibe coded" across two days, built in Unreal with MCP, and posted a recording of an AI agent testing and reworking it. He then wondered aloud what two people could achieve in a year with the same help.
His argument was that gaming is the one industry whose leaders avoid the subject because players dislike AI, and that Xbox should stop hiding it. He said he loves Xbox and Microsoft and accepted he might lose his job. An Xbox source told PC Gamer he left because of the flood of replies. PC Gamer also notes that the month before, he had told laid-off colleagues to use Copilot to list their accomplishments.
The Xbox logo on a sign, shown with a game character in PC Gamer's illustration of the story
Photo by Tomohiro Ohsumi/Getty Images; Carl "CJ" Johnson: Rockstar/Take-Two Interactive · Image: PC Gamer
Engadget pushes back on the idea that everyone is on board. Industry surveys put AI adoption near 90 percent, it says, but it doubts they are representative. Capcom, Square Enix, Sega, Nexon, Activision and Epic Games use or have pledged AI, while small studios such as Finji, ConcernedApe and Strange Scaffold oppose it. Epic has confirmed AI use in coding Unreal Engine 6 and Fortnite, and its CEO Tim Sweeney promotes it on social media.
About Xbox
Xbox is Microsoft's video gaming brand, covering its console lines, Xbox Cloud Gaming, the Xbox network and Game Pass. It first launched in the United States in November 2001 with the original Xbox console, and since 2022 it has sat inside Microsoft's Microsoft Gaming division.
Leadership changed in February 2026, when Phil Spencer retired as head of Xbox and Asha Sharma, an executive from Microsoft's AI side, took over. Before that, Microsoft's AI work had already made Xbox the target of a BDS boycott over the Israeli military's use of that technology.
The thread lands as Xbox has set up Xbox Labs, widely read as AI-friendly and partly a response to AI-coded game ports, and is now led by a former AI executive. Microsoft's AI work has also made Xbox a target of a BDS boycott over its use by the Israeli military. Xbox has taken no official position on making games with AI, and the articles report no comment or action against Stirrup.
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