Xbox Executive Builds His Own Game in Three Hours: “I Could Be Fired Tomorrow”

Making games with AI is getting easier—and even major game publishers are starting to take notice. For now, AI is mostly an internal tool, but some big names are beginning to speak publicly about what they think the future holds.

Xbox manager Brandon Stirrup called for greater openness about AI in the games industry on October 18 and 19, 2026. He said AI lets people build games themselves and that Xbox employees already use the technology. After posting a series of messages, he deactivated his X account.

Stirrup is a senior business strategy manager at Xbox. He shared his personal views after using AI to make a simple game of his own. His comments went beyond enthusiasm for the experiment: in his view, game companies that leave AI out of their plans for the future are preparing for a future that will never arrive.

Stirrup said he built a game over two days, spending about three hours actively working on it. He had no prior experience in game development, he said. He described the result as bad, but something that could be improved.

In posts compiled by Pure Xbox, Stirrup wondered how far he could get with two people helping him for a year. The experience led him to conclude that anyone can build a game.

He used vibe coding: creating software by describing in plain language what it should do, then having AI write or modify the code. With AI coding tools such as Cursor and Claude Code, creators can then request changes, ask the AI to investigate bugs and test the results.

That could open the door for people with a game idea but no development experience. But the three-hour figure is Stirrup’s own estimate. His experiment is no independent measure of how long it takes to make a complete, polished game.

Stirrup argued that the games industry is too cautious about discussing AI, saying executives fear a backlash from players. “We use AI,” he wrote in a post cited by Windows Central.

He also claimed that hundreds of people at Xbox use the technology. The quoted posts do not specify which tools they use or for what tasks, so his comments offer no breakdown of AI use in individual Xbox games.

Stirrup linked his call for openness to a possible personal risk. He wrote that he could be fired the next day for publicly saying what others, in his view, would rather keep quiet.

On October 19, Pure Xbox reported in an update that the posts had disappeared and the account no longer seemed to be available. An Xbox source later told PC Gamer that Stirrup had deactivated his own account because of the volume of responses.

The reports reviewed do not confirm that he was fired. Nor do they indicate that Microsoft told him to delete his account. The gaming outlets that documented his comments have preserved some of the now-deleted posts in their articles.

Xbox had already announced Xbox Labs on October 13. The small team of game makers, engineers and researchers will experiment with new technology. Among other things, Xbox wants to explore how more players can become creators or collaborators.

Xbox chief Asha Sharma pointed to software agents that can write, run and test code. She also mentioned experiments in which developers adapt existing games to work on other devices. AIWereld previously covered how creators use similar techniques to rebuild older games for modern systems.

In its announcement, Microsoft said it would continue its existing work on games and hardware while handling intellectual property carefully. Xbox also plans to share the tools it develops with other game makers.

That could give aspiring creators access to a wider range of tools. Whether their games are actually fun to play is another question. Even a first working version still needs decisions about controls, difficulty and visual design—and plenty of bug fixing. Stirrup’s weekend project shows why he is excited about getting started; it says much less about all the work that comes next.