Xbox shares early details on next console “Project Helix,” says dev kits start in 2027

Microsoft has started talking, a little, about its next Xbox console. The system is currently codenamed Project Helix, and Xbox says developers should expect alpha hardware to start showing up in 2027.

Speaking at the GDC Festival of Gaming, Xbox VP of Next Generation Jason Ronald said Helix is being built with AMD, using a custom AMD-based SoC. According to Game Developer’s report, Microsoft is positioning Helix around next-gen DirectX features, including “deep texture compression” and more machine-learning driven rendering work.

Ronald also claimed Helix will bring a big jump in ray tracing performance, describing it as an “order of magnitude” improvement over current hardware. He tied that to what he called “neural rendering techniques,” name-checking things like neural materials, generated images, and ML-based upscaling and super resolution.

On the storage side, Ronald said the team is leaning on newer DirectStorage capabilities so games can stream assets more directly from the SSD, with an eye toward using memory more efficiently. He also mentioned support for “Z standard,” though the talk didn’t get into exact specs or what that will mean in real-world game performance.

Microsoft also reiterated its backward compatibility stance. In an Xbox Wire post, Ronald said the company is committed to keeping games from four generations of Xbox playable, and teased “new ways to play” older games as part of Xbox’s 25th anniversary later this year. The same post also suggests Microsoft wants players to be able to access PC games on Xbox hardware, though details are still thin.