When Asha Sharma was appointed as the new CEO of Microsoft Gaming last month, she entered the Xbox stage with a bold statement: “We will celebrate our roots with a renewed commitment to Xbox starting with console which has shaped who we are.”
Just weeks later, that commitment has kicked off with the official confirmation that a new Xbox is in development. Project Helix is a “next generation console” that can “play your Xbox and PC games.” The rumours were all true, then. Such a feat isn’t as simple as it sounds, though, and this hybrid machine has surely presented Xbox’s engineering team with an Everest-grade challenge. Because when you consider the way today’s technology works, it seems more likely that Helix is a PC that plays Xbox games, not the other way around. And without an incredibly careful approach, Helix could become another addition to the confusing “This is an Xbox” mess rather than a brave new console generation.
Xbox has created a fascinating challenge for itself: Project Helix has to be two devices in one box. A video game console and a PC are, despite their similarities, two distinct things, and Helix needs to be both using just a single hardware setup. And that’s where the difficulties start. If Helix is to play PC games without any caveats – if this Xbox is to play any and all games available on Steam, Epic Games Store, Ubisoft Connect, GOG, and any other service, rather than select games ringfenced by the Microsoft Store – then the hardware will need to be designed with a PC-first mindset. It will need to be capable of running games designed for the PC’s open, less precision-optimised environment at “next gen” quality, a situation that will presumably dictate the machine’s specifications.
Anyone who has built a PC to run Cyberpunk 2077 at 4K60, or perhaps in preparation for the upcoming Crimson Desert, will know the cost of such hardware is astronomical – even more so now, in the age of the AI-enforced RAM apocalypse. And anyone who has tried to build a PC comparable to a console on a console-ish budget will know the results are typically less than inspiring. The price of Helix, then, is already a rapidly flashing red light. Plus, if Helix can play Steam games, then the machine provides no guaranteed game revenue flow back to Microsoft, and that will certainly affect Xbox’s pricing strategy.
The fact that Project Helix even exists in the first place suggests that Microsoft has solved the puzzle of engineering a cohesive set of hardware components that can act as both PC and console architecture, even if the cost of that flexibility means a device possibly (likely) priced in excess of $1,000. Helix can cater to the needs of games coded for different devices, presumably in a fashion more advanced than just running a console emulator on PC. But regardless of whether that was an easy feat to achieve or not, the true challenge Helix faces is software. Because, in many ways, it’s software that makes a machine a console, not the components within it.
To be clear, when I say software, I mean operating systems, not games. Helix will require an OS that can seamlessly switch between its console and PC environments, sort of like a modern-day version of how the launch era PlayStation 3 could flip into PS2 mode. I suspect that Helix will be a little more sophisticated than having two walled-off environments that it needs to hop between, but from the perspective of the user, there really can’t be any difference between each side of the experience. Your Helix’s library needs to be your entire game library across console and PC (something the GOG’s Galaxy PC client already proves can be done). Booting games needs to feel identical across both sides of the platform, as does the overlay interface. It needs to be completely unified. It needs to be completely Xbox.
Will Xbox treat the PC side of Helix as something for enthusiasts, selling peripherals that are required to unlock the entire breadth of the machine’s capabilities?“
In other words, Microsoft needs to take this stuff much more seriously than it did with the ROG Xbox Ally handhelds. While (sort of) marketed as handheld Xboxes, the Ally and Ally X are actually portable gaming PCs. As such, they operate like PCs, not consoles. They run Windows 11, and suffer from all the horrible little issues that anything running Windows 11 suffers. Updates, product offers, and security systems like Windows Hello all push their way up through the “Xbox Full Screen Experience”, which is supposed to make the Ally operate like a console, but actually often proves an ill-fitting skin stretched over Windows 11. This absolutely can’t be a thing on Helix. It can’t even be a thing on half of Helix.
In an ideal world, Helix would be governed by a new, dedicated Xbox operating system that interfaces with both PC games and storefronts and traditional Xbox games and apps. It ideally needs to be akin to Valve’s SteamOS, the system that runs the Steam Deck and the forthcoming Steam Machine, in more ways than one. SteamOS uses a compatibility layer called Proton to effectively “translate” PC games designed for Windows and make them work on a Linux-based machine. This is what makes using a Steam Deck feel so complete and console-like, and why – at least in my opinion – it’s a better option than the Ally’s Xbox-layered-over-Windows 11 approach. The ultimate version of Helix doesn’t run Windows at all, but instead has its own compatibility layer that makes games designed for Windows run on a dedicated Xbox OS.
Microsoft undoubtedly has the talent and resources to make this happen. Does it have the will and conviction to, though? Why would it pump time and cash into developing this when it already has Windows, the system that every PC game is built for by default? It’s not hard to believe that Helix will require you to manually switch between Windows and Xbox, the two halves bridged by Xbox Full Screen Experience, and the PC version still cursed by all the rough edges of an OS designed first and foremost for productivity and offices.
Maybe all those edges will be sanded down by the time Helix is a system we can buy. There’s reason to be optimistic in that regard, as I do think Microsoft has been thinking ahead. Take a look at Game Pass, which now offers PC games at every one of its three tiers, instead of the old system of Xbox Game Pass vs PC Game Pass. There’s no longer any chance of a Helix owner subscribing to Xbox Game Pass and then being unable to play Age of Empires.
But this poses wider questions about Helix’s identity. When your Xbox is a PC, how do you approach playing a strategy game like Age of Empires? Will Helix ship with a mouse and keyboard by default? Will its controller feature track pads, akin to Steam’s upcoming model? Will there be a software solution that automatically maps a PC game’s inputs to the controller? Or will Xbox treat the PC side of Helix as something for “elite” enthusiasts, opening up the opportunity to sell a bunch of peripherals that are required to unlock the entire breadth of the machine’s capabilities? It’s hard not to be at least a little skeptical in the face of such questions.
The biggest question, of course, is why anyone should buy Project Helix over a PC? What will it offer that a PC can’t? Will it be a better price? A better user experience? Utilise a revolutionary new version of Game Pass? These are all questions Microsoft will want to have answers prepared for the moment it properly unveils the machine. Because whatever Helix is, it certainly won’t be as customizable and freely upgradable as a PC, and it presumably won’t be as straightforward as Sony’s next-generation PlayStation console.
That leaves us with a final question. In the age of Project Helix, what is an Xbox? Last year, we were told it could be pretty much anything connected to the internet. This year, Asha Sharma began her tenure as the new CEO of Microsoft Gaming by promising “a renewed commitment to Xbox starting with console” – but her console, or at least the one she’s inherited, is a PC.
So, what is an Xbox? I guess an Xbox is whatever it wants to be. As long as that’s not just a games console, that is.
Matt Purslow is IGN’s Executive Editor of Features.