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MS exec: Microsoft’s next console will play “Xbox and PC games”

Project Helix is set to open the closed-console ecosystem, but the details will matter.

Kyle Orland – | 150
What's that cresting over the penumbra? Is it a Windows box? Credit: Microsoft
What's that cresting over the penumbra? Is it a Windows box? Credit: Microsoft
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Last summer, we here at Ars made the argument that the company’s next Xbox console should give up the walled garden approach and just run Windows already. Now, newly named Microsoft Executive Vice President for Gaming Asha Sharma has strongly hinted that this is indeed the direction Microsoft is going, saying its next-generation console will “play your Xbox and PC games.”

In a social media post Thursday afternoon, Sharma said that “our commitment to the return of Xbox” would include a new console codenamed Project Helix that “will lead in performance and play your Xbox and PC games.” Sharma said she would be discussing that commitment and that console itself with developers and partners at her first Game Developers Conference next week.

Sharma’s statement leaves a little wiggle room for Project Helix to be something other than a full-fledged Windows-based living room gaming box. The coming console’s access to PC games could be limited to Microsoft’s existing streaming solution via PC Game Pass, for instance, or to games designed for Microsoft’s own Xbox-branded PC SDK and the PC Xbox app.

Still, a plain reading of Sharma’s statement suggests that Microsoft is getting ready to open up its next console to a complete Windows installation, with the ability to play tens of thousands of existing PC games. That doesn’t come as a complete shock, considering that Microsoft already used the Xbox name for last year’s Windows-based ROG Xbox Ally (and its somewhat console-esque full-screen “Xbox Experience”). Microsoft has also been slowly reducing the number of games that are fully exclusive to Xbox consoles, lowering the value of a walled-off console platform (Sony, meanwhile, pulled back this week from its recent trend of releasing first-party titles on PC as well). Meanwhile, Valve’s coming Steam Machine is threatening to bring Windows-free PC gaming to living rooms everywhere in the near future.

Rumors of a Windows-based Xbox console have been floating around for a while, too. Windows Central reported last October that Microsoft’s next console would run a TV-optimized version of “full-bore Windows,” with the option to stay inside a separate “Xbox ecosystem” if players choose (much like SteamOS exists alongside base Linux on the Steam Deck). Earlier this month, the site suggested that the console could come out next year in various tiers along the price/power spectrum.

The devil, as always, will come in the details. How smoothly will living room players be able to manage games across multiple PC launchers and store platforms? How smoothly will the console adapt games designed explicitly for a keyboard and mouse to a living room setting? How easily will it play games designed for older versions of Windows (along with older Xbox consoles)?

We’ll keep an eye out for these kinds of details as they inevitably drip out in the months leading up to Project Helix’s eventual launch. For now, though, we have the strongest indication yet that Microsoft wants to merge its Xbox and Windows gaming ecosystems for good.

Photo of Kyle Orland
Kyle Orland Senior Gaming Editor
Kyle Orland has been the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica since 2012, writing primarily about the business, tech, and culture behind video games. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He once wrote a whole book about Minesweeper.
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If the next Xbox is just a PC, how will it differentiate ? What will be the added value ?
Same as any other console. It's already set up out of the box for you, and anything carrying a label for that hardware will work and perform well. That's the promise of a console, and it's the promise any "basically a PC but console shaped" will need to match.

Just to add an example, we're already seeing this with "Steamdeck Compatible" markers for various PC games. A Steamdeck is basically a PC in a Switchlike form factor, so it'll "run" whatever a PC will, but that logo lets you know a PC game's been tested specifically with that set and it's intended to run well.
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