Microsoft continued the rollout of its future Xbox plans at GDC today in a talk hosted by VP of next generation Jason Ronald. Titled “Building for the Future with Xbox”, the talk centered around Project Helix, the codename for the next Xbox console that will bridge the gap between a console and traditional PC.
Ronald expanded on what that dual identity will actually mean for the machine, and by the sound of things, Helix will behave similarly to Valve’s upcoming Steam Machine with the distinction that it “plays your Xbox console and PC games.” That’s according to IGN, which live blogged the talk from the show.
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- 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 Multiframe Generation
- Next Gen Ray Regeneration for RT and Path Tracing
Deep texture compression
- Neural Texture Compression
- Direct Storage + Zstd
Here’s an overview of Project Helix features. Partnered with AMD, designed for the next generation of DirectX.
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“The days of people defining themselves as (console/PC/mobile gamer) don’t really exist anymore,” Ronald said, as recounted by IGN. “What we’ve really learned is as we look at it, PC is becoming an increasingly important part of the Xbox experience.” Microsoft is continuing its work to bring the Xbox dashboard to the PC as it began with the ROG Ally X’s specialized Windows interface.
Ronald also announced that alpha versions of the Helix console will begin shipping to developers in 2027, suggesting that the earliest it’ll be ready for primetime is 2028. By that time, the current Xbox hardware will be pushing eight years old.
That is, of course, assuming assembling PCs at a massive scale will still be feasible given our current AI-fueled RAM crisis—Valve’s own console-ized PC box was delayed to sometime in 2026 until it can find enough RAM between the couch cushions to meet the moment.
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