We’re here at the 2026 Game Developers Conference, where Microsoft “VP of Next Generation” Jason Ronald is talking about a topic near and dear to many gamers’ hearts: the future of Xbox. Ronald says the next Xbox, codenamed Project Helix, will have a custom AMD chip with “an order of magnitude increase in raytracing performance” up to and including path tracing, and a next-gen version of AMD’s FSR upscaling technology that relies on machine learning and includes frame generation — which can improve the perceived smoothness of a game by imagining new frames between existing ones.
But don’t expect that next Xbox soon: Microsoft will begin sending out “alpha versions” of Project Helix to developers in 2027, Ronald revealed here at GDC.
Details about Project Helix. Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge
Ronald also confirmed that Xbox and Windows are getting closer together, beyond the fact that Project Helix will play PC games too. “PC is becoming an increasingly important part of Xbox. We’re bringing the best of Xbox to Windows itself,” says Ronald.
Microsoft is bringing the Xbox mode that originally shipped with the Xbox Ally handheld to more Windows computers “to select markets starting in April,” as well as Advanced Shader Delivery, which precompiles shaders so you can download them alongside a game or its updates, instead of having to wait when you launch a title.
Ronald says the Microsoft team’s been doing a lot of work behind the scenes to make the Xbox mode “feel distinctly Xbox” and feel the same as you migrate between devices and cloud. He says gamers play 3-5 games at any one time on average, and you should be able to pick up and play whether you’re on console, PC, or cloud.
As we spotted outside the keynote, Microsoft wants game developers to just build once for both Windows and Xbox, instead of building twice for both. It’s creating a unified development environment where “The vast majority of code that your game runs on Xbox is the exact same code that runs on other platforms,” says Ronald.
And while he isn’t promising all games will be this way, Ronald suggests that you won’t have to buy those games multiple times, too: the already-existing Xbox Play Anywhere program lets you buy once and “play on any screen,” he says. The catalog of Xbox Play Anywhere games now has more than 1,500 titles, Ronald says.
As part of the 25th anniversary of Xbox, the the game preservation team will also re-release an unspecified number of older Xbox titles under its Game Preservation program, Ronald says. “As one of the largest publishers in the industry, we feel a deep responsibility to preserve games from the past.” And he hints that “some of our most iconic first-party franchises are returning this year.”
Does Game Preservation mean classic Xbox games are coming to PC? An official summary of his remarks makes it sound like that: “As part of our 25th anniversary later this year, we’ll be rolling out new ways to play some of the most iconic games from our past.” Ronald wouldn’t tell us when we asked him outside the venue, only saying that more news will come when Microsoft announces those 25th anniversary plans.
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