Today at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, Microsoft held a panel discussion during which Xbox next-gen VP Jason Ronald shared new insight into the company’s plans for the future of the platform, including the recently announced Project Helix console/PC platform.
Xbox executive Jason Ronald announced that alpha versions of Project Helix devkits will begin to go out to developers in 2027. Devkits are early versions of new consoles that developers often get access to prior to launch so they can starting building games for the final system.
“We’re continuing to push innovation for our next 25 years with our team hard at work on our next-generation first-party console: Project Helix is designed to play your Xbox console and PC games, delivering leading performance and ushering in the next generation of console gaming,” Ronald said.
He went on to say that Microsoft, together with AMD, are endeavoring to shape “the future of rendering and simulation” with the new machine. “Project Helix is powered by a custom AMD SoC and co-designed for the next generation of DirectX and FSR to unlock what comes next,” he said.
Ronald added: “It delivers an order of magnitude leap in ray tracing performance and capability, integrates intelligence directly into the graphics and compute pipeline, and drives meaningful gains in efficiency, scale, and visual ambition. The result is more realistic, immersive, and dynamic worlds for players.”
The ambition of Project Helix is to meet players where they are, Ronald said. “We’re breaking down the barriers between console and PC games for more seamless cross-device play, and we’re making the Xbox experience consistent across screens. This also gives developers a simpler, more unified path to reach more players while helping reduce development costs,” he explained.
Ronald also confirmed more technical details about Project Helix. Ronald shared a slide that runs through some of the under-the-hood specifics about the console platform. Here are the specifics:
Powered By Custom AMD SOC
- Codesigned for Next Generation of DirectX
- Next Gen Raytracing Performance & Capabilities
- GPU Directed Work Graph Execution
AMD FSR Next + Project Helix
- Built for Next Generation of Neural Rendering
- Next Generation ML Upscaling
- New ML Multi Frame Generation
- Next Gen Ray Regeneration for RT and Path Tracing
Deep Texture Compression
- Neural Texture Compression
- Direct Storage + Zstd
Much of what’s outlined here comes as no surprise, although the introduction of multi frame generation on consoles could prove to be a key development for console performance. This could enable higher or more stable frame rates without requiring as much of a sacrifice in terms of visual quality.
Ronald’s talk at GDC was aimed at developers and other people in the industry, and it was never expected to be a big reveal event for Project Helix. That will come sometime later.
One of the big unanswered questions about Project Helix is how much it will cost. One industry analyst has predicted a price point of $900 or more.
“The PS5 Pro is $750 in the US, while the Xbox Series X with 2TB is [$800],” Dr. Serkan Toto of research group Kantan Games told GamesRadar. “There is absolutely no reason to expect Project Helix to be cheaper, so a base model could be priced at $900 and a more premium version at even more than that.”
Toto believes that the RAM crisis could be over by the time Project Helix is put into production, but he added that “fans should brace for an expensive machine in any case.”
Toto also noted that Project Helix “might be Microsoft’s last attempt to make their hardware business work.”
Project Helix is coming to market under the leadership of new Microsoft Gaming CEO Asha Sharma, who is taking over for Phil Spencer. He’s staying on through the summer to help with the handoff but will retire after that. He had worked at Microsoft for 38 years, starting as an intern and rising through the ranks to the top boss of gaming.
As part of the executive shuffle, Xbox president Sarah Bond has left Microsoft, with no replacement named. Xbox’s Matt Booty, meanwhile, got a promotion to become chief content officer at Xbox.
