In the days leading up to one of the games industry’s bigger trade conferences, Microsoft has quietly unveiled the code name for its next-generation Xbox console: Project Helix.
The name appeared without initial fanfare in a post on X on Thursday morning.
Xbox CEO Asha Sharma, who just replaced longtime leader Phil Spencer, followed up in a post on her own account, in which she briefly discussed her team’s “commitment to the return of Xbox.” Sharma also noted that Project Helix will “lead in performance” and “play your Xbox and PC games.”
Next week marks the annual Game Developers’ Conference in San Francisco, which has gained some prominence for news and announcements in recent years. It’s possible that some new information about this next-gen Xbox will come out of this year’s GDC, which is both Sharma’s first time at the show and her first time attending as the head of Xbox. Sharma reportedly has plans to meet with both partners and studios while at GDC.
That marks the end of the information about Project Helix that’s currently publicly available. The most remarkable fact about it for now may simply be that it exists, in the face of persistent rumors that Microsoft’s executives would like to sunset Xbox entirely and an ongoing memory shortage caused by the rise of AI data centers.
Despite industry expectations, it looks like Microsoft’s games division plans to stick it out for at least one more console generation. The start of that generation may be pushed off a couple of years from its initially rumored late-2027 starting point, as RAM is currently getting scarcer on the market, but whenever it begins, it looks like Xbox will still be there.
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