Autofill's inaugural edition: Xbox's big shakeup and the "yassification" of graphics

Hey! Chris Compendio here. For those who don’t know me, I’m a reporter with nearly a decade of experience in games media.

A lot of my peers are doing some amazing work creating newsletters, with inside scoops, in-depth analysis, and interviews with industry figures. These are great for people who regularly consume video game news and for people already involved in games media or the industry, like myself.

But what about that broad audience who loves playing video games, yet are out of the loop when it comes to news?

Everyone plays video games differently and at varying levels. Gaming is both my main hobby and quite literally my job—but games aren’t a priority for most people, as much as they might love the medium. For many, gaming might be an occasional diversion or a subject that they admire from afar while lacking the capacity to engage with it fully. That’s reasonable, and in fact, very healthy!

So with that in mind, Autofill has one goal: keeping you up-to-date on the games industry with stories and topics that you’re interested in through quick news rundowns. I’ll tackle big stories and convey them in ways that are easy to digest, and I’ll especially aim to cover topics that permeate politics and mainstream culture.

Think of this as your “Last Week Tonight” for video game news—I’ll be in your inbox at the beginning of every week to sum up the previous week’s biggest news stories, breaking them down FAQ-style. Then, I’ll hit some smaller stories in bullet point format and update you on the latest hot game releases in a segment called “Replay.”

To serve the goal of hitting the gaming topics that you want to read about, Autofill has an interactive feature called “Fill Me In On _______,” where I’ll indulge your gaming curiosites by letting you request topics you’d like me to cover in a future newsletter issue. Finally, I’ll end every newsletter by describing my current gaming hyperfixations in a section called “On Deck.”

This first issue will be a little different (and probably longer) than usual—we’re a quarter into 2026, so I’ll catch you up on a couple of big headlines from the year so far. Expect more focused news roundups in future issues, since they’ll only cover what happened over a week. And there’s never any pressure to read the entirety of the newsletter—Autofill is designed so you can find topics you want to read about and skip straight to those.

Big shoutout to @ivk_media for designing the Autofill logo! I hope you enjoy this news digest and make it a part of your weekly routine, and please consider tipping so I can continue to grow this project.

Xbox has undergone a major shakeup, with its longtime leader Phil Spencer stepping down. His successor is Asha Sharma, a name largely unknown to those in the gaming space—her prior role at Microsoft was leading the company’s CoreAI division, and she previously held the titles of Instacart COO and VP Product & Engineering.

But despite her previous position’s focus on AI, Sharma made it very clear in her first statement as Microsoft Gaming CEO that the Xbox team “will not chase short-term efficiency or flood our ecosystem with soulless AI slop.” It’s a very pointed statement considering that her boss, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, really doesn’t like the term “slop.”

Sharma listed three promises to Xbox fans: great games, “the return of Xbox,” and the “reinvention of play.” What that practically means remains to be seen, but given Xbox’s current position in the market, she has a lot to prove.

Long story short, Xbox hasn’t been doing too hot. The current Xbox console has consistently lagged behind PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch in sales, and it’s been one disaster after another with Microsoft.

In the years following its massive acquisitions of Bethesda and Activision Blizzard, the Xbox team has laid off thousands of workers, closed studios, canceled previously announced games, hiked console and subscription prices, and leaned harder toward releasing previously Xbox-exclusive games on PlayStation and Switch. Whether or not these troubles were solely the fault of Phil Spencer, it’s no surprise that he’s out of the picture now, despite all he’s contributed to the brand.

Sharma herself announced that the next Xbox console has the codename Project Helix, and it’ll “play your Xbox and PC games.”

That could be good news for anyone who wants to play both their Xbox back catalog and their Steam games on their television. And in theory, unifying PC and Xbox could make game development easier. But it’s bad news for anyone who hates Windows, because this device is likely to just be a Windows machine you plug into your TV. It’s especially bad news for your wallet, because the next Xbox will probably be hella expensive.

Tech giant Nvidia unveiled what it calls a “breakthrough” in visual fidelity in DLSS 5, a tool that uses generative AI to essentially add a layer of “photoreal lighting and materials” to computer graphics. But even a quick glimpse of Nvidia’s examples of how this technology would apply to existing games has, at best, raised questions of ethics and artistic integrity.

Nvidia’s announcement prominently featured the recently released Resident Evil Requiem, demonstrating what the game’s protagonist, Grace Ashcroft, would look like after a DLSS 5 glow-up. The result is a character with a noticeably different face, arguably straying from the original artistic intent behind the character and, in many observers’ words, “yassifying” her appearance.

The DLSS 5 feature is due to launch on PC in the fall, but it’s unclear how it’ll be implemented in games and what kind of hardware PC owners need to take advantage of it.

Nvidia stated that major game studios are fully on board with DLSS 5 and have “artistic control” over its usage in their games, but that doesn’t account for the individual developers and artists on the ground working on these games. There’s been a range of reactions from select developers to DLSS 5 in a few different ways, from calling it “a misguided attempt at realism” to declaring “fuck NVIDIA, fuck these ghouls.” Another game developer predicted that the technology will “probably be so performance costly that few people will be willing to use it."

As with every big event or announcement, most of the internet’s reactions to DLSS 5 have come in the form of memes. The tool has been lambasted as AI slop, and memes roasting Nvidia have made fun of the goal of photorealism with images comparing DLSS 5 to live-action adaptations of anime, Handsome Squidward, and that infamously botched fresco restoration from over a decade ago.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang initially said that critics of DLSS 5 were “completely wrong,” emphasizing artistic control of the developers and characterizing the tool as “content-control generative AI.” Huang later took a softer approach to the criticism, saying that he “[doesn’t] love AI slop” and said he was “empathetic” towards criticism.

Huang also added that if artists didn’t like how DLSS 5 looked, “they could decide not to use it, you know?”

Not sure what “RAMaggedeon” is or how it might affect you? Was the word “roguelike” completely new and utterly baffling to you just now? Are you looking for content creators with special interests to follow? Curious about the prospects of working in the games industry? Or are you just trying to catch up with everything new added to Animal Crossing: New Horizons?

While you could do some Google searching and look at a terrible AI-generated summary, I can devote this section to your questions in a future newsletter issue! Learn what you want about the games industry and its culture, but in a more personable and accessible fashion.

Write to me about a blind spot you have about gaming that you’re curious about, and keep up-to-date with Autofill to read my explanation on your requested topic. As of now, I’m aiming to hit 1-3 requested topics per issue, depending on response volume. The link to the submission form is below for subscribers of this newsletter.

Resident Evil is a game series I’ve been curious and knowledgeable about for years, but my general aversion to horror has prevented me from playing it until fairly recently. Somehow, I was finally brave enough to give the Resident Evil 2 remake on PS5 a try, and between screaming at the jump scares the game threw at me, my curiosity about Resident Evil transformed into admiration and excitement.

The first segment of Resident Evil 2 takes place in an art museum-turned-police station, filled with puzzles to solve and zombies to shoot in the head. It felt like a cross between an escape room and a haunted house, and I found myself investing more energy in figuring out how each area connects and optimizing my routes than I did gunning down the undead.

What fascinates me about the series as a whole is the multitudes it contains. Like the combination art museum/police station, Resident Evil is full of strange mismashes of themes and genres. One entry might resemble a Texas Chainsaw Massacre-like slasher while the next invokes gothic horror. Some games are slow, deliberate, tense, and contained, while others are rapid-paced whirlwind adventures with explosions, plenty of roundhouse kicks, and boulder-punching. A few games switch between both styles, and all of them contain cheesy B-movie dialogue.

Next up for me is the Resident Evil 3 remake, a game I’ve heard mixed things about. However it’ll end up, I’m ready to take mental notes for the puzzles and cover my eyes for the horror.

Thank you for reading Autofill’s first issue! We’ll be back next week. In the meantime, I’ll be working on some issues I have with this platform and website builder, so let me know if you have any specific problems.

Catch you in the flippy flip,
Chris Compendio