Xbox Project Helix won't be in developers' hands until 2027

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Published Mar 11, 2026, 1:53 PM EDT

Microsoft reveals new details about its next-gen Xbox at GDC

Image: Microsoft

Microsoft's next Xbox, code named Project Helix, will be in developers' hands in 2027, the company revealed during a talk at the GDC Festival of Gaming on Wednesday. Alpha versions of development kits will be delivered to game makers by then, which casts some doubt on Microsoft's reported ability to ship the next Xbox in late 2027.

Jason Ronald, vice president of next generation at Xbox, walked GDC attendees through some of the planned features for Project Helix, reaffirming that the device will play Xbox console and Windows PC games. Ronald promised next-gen ray tracing performance, powered by chipmaker AMD's custom silicon. Project Helix's implementation of AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) will offer next-generation machine learning-powered upscaling and multi-frame generation, and ray regeneration for ray tracing and path tracing, with deep texture compression, according to a slide shown during Ronald's talk.

Ronald boasted of an "order of magnitude increase in ray tracing" for the next Xbox. Ray tracing on current-gen consoles often comes at a notable performance cost, with many games offering optional ray-tracing effects in lieu of optimal resolution or frame rate.

Elsewhere at GDC, as reported by The Verge, Microsoft is telling developers to build for Xbox devices on PC, using its unified game development kit being compatible with Windows gaming PCs, Windows gaming handheld, and next-gen consoles.

Microsoft officially announced plans for a successor to the Xbox Series X in June 2025, revealing that the company had signed a deal with AMD to "co-engineer silicon" for its "next-generation Xbox consoles." Then-president of Xbox Sarah Bond made that announcement, signaling that the next-generation Xbox console(s) would run on Windows, and would not be “locked to a single store.” At the time, there were persistent rumors that future Xboxes would be more open, PC-like devices and integrate with storefronts like Steam and the Epic Games Store. Bond had also described the next-gen Xbox as "a very premium, very high-end curated experience." Recent estimates have pegged the price of the next-gen Xbox at $1,000 or higher.

Here's everything else we know about Xbox Project Helix so far.

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