Xbox is bringing main character energy with Project Helix

Microsoft’s console brand has never been less relevant, but at GDC, it was all anyone could talk about

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This week, the games industry — or some of it, anyway — gathered in San Francisco for one of its annual rituals, the Game Developers Conference. Much was made of a “Festival of Gaming” rebrand that, according to our reporter on the ground Giovanni Colantonio, didn’t amount to much more than some inconveniently placed food trucks. Much was also made of the fact that international attendees might choose not to travel to Donald Trump’s America for GDC this year, but the convention seemed plenty busy enough.

Plus ça change. Another regular fixture of GDC is Microsoft holding court at a presentation about whatever it’s pushing as the future of gaming this year. This year it ploughed on with a presentation about the next Xbox, Project Helix which told us little we didn’t already know: It will be Windows-based, play PC games, and have very fancy graphics. Developers will have dev kits next year.

The plans for the console, and indeed for the GDC presentation, were surely locked in a long time ago, so the presentation isn’t indicative of new Microsoft Gaming CEO Asha Sharma’s thinking. All the same, due to the high-profile talk — and due to the drama and instability that has surrounded Xbox for the last few years — it was all anybody could talk about. (Well, apart from the RAM crisis. We’ll have more reporting on that soon.)

Following speculation from influential gaming tech YouTuber Moore’s Law is Dead, rumors swirled about a $1,000 price tag. Developers wondered if they should be making games for Project Helix, and there was confusion about what the device would actually be — perhaps more confusion than it really warranted, even as unconventional as Microsoft’s plans seem to be. Hopefully Microsoft’s private meetings at GDC cleared some of this up.

In real terms, Xbox consoles have never been less relevant. They’re dead last in the sales race, and whatever the plans for the future are, they don’t seem to be about reclaiming mass-market ground from Sony and Nintendo. Despite this — or more likely because of it — Xbox has a way of remaining the main topic of conversation. This isn’t necessarily Microsoft’s fault. I’m as guilty of making hay out of Microsoft’s years in the strategic wilderness as anyone. But they keep making it so easy!

Here’s a suggestion to Sharma and her team: Now you’ve got your foot in the door and established that there will be another console, maybe keep quiet for a bit. Not for the sake of us in the media (far from it!), but for the sake of Xbox, and its poor beleaguered fans. They could use a break.

The 11 best games we played at GDC 2026

Getting back to what really matters, Giovanni Colantonio previews a bunch of outrageously cool indies, plus Elden Ring on Switch 2. Can’t wait for Mina the Hollower.

At GDC, AI could do everything and nothing

Giovanni Colantonio takes a snapshot of a creative industry trying to figure what AI can actually do that might be useful, amid all the hype and fury.

Steam’s exploding sales numbers aren’t telling the whole story

At GDC, Valve gave itself a big pat on the back about how easy it is to sell games on Steam, but not everyone agrees. Patricia Hernandez reports.

Plus this:

• This 100-year-old pirate movie still rips: Jesse Hassenger discovers that thing where a guy slides down a sail using a knife was invented by The Black Pirate a century ago.
• Marathon is already the most terrifying game of 2026: Never mind the horror games, Corey Plante fears everything about Bungie's ferocious new extraction shooter.
• Slay the Spire 2 plays like DLC. 17 hours in, I’m glad it’s not one: Matt Patches thinks we should all just chill out about how similar the hugely successful roguelike deckbuilder is to its predecessor.
• A fan complained about playing as a woman, so this dev made the option to play as tofu: Patricia Hernandez reports on the Honcho developer’s tongue-in-cheek response to an all-too-familiar whine.
• 10 years later, the original writers of 10 Cloverfield Lane look back: Brian VanHooker interviews a pair of screenwriters about what happened when their spec script suddenly became a franchise movie.
• The BAFTA Games Awards takes judging games very, very seriously: I talk to the awards body about why they prefer being right to being first.