We’re right here on the 2026 Recreation Builders Convention, the place Microsoft “VP of Subsequent Era” Jason Ronald is talking about a subject close to and expensive to many players’ hearts: the way forward for Xbox. Ronald says the subsequent Xbox, codenamed Challenge Helix, may have a customized AMD chip with “an order of magnitude improve in raytracing efficiency” as much as and together with path tracing.
It can additionally embody a next-gen model of AMD’s FSR upscaling know-how that depends on machine studying and consists of body era that may enhance the perceived smoothness of a recreation by imagining new frames between current ones. In a publish on X, AMD exec Jack Hyunh called it FSR Diamond, saying it’s “designed to be natively optimized for Challenge Helix and deeply built-in into the GDK.”
However don’t anticipate that subsequent Xbox quickly: Microsoft will start sending out “alpha variations” of Challenge Helix to builders in 2027, Ronald revealed right here at GDC.
Ronald additionally confirmed that Xbox and Home windows are getting closer together, past the truth that Challenge Helix will play PC video games too. “PC is changing into an more and more necessary a part of Xbox. We’re bringing one of the best of Xbox to Home windows itself,” says Ronald.
Microsoft is bringing the Xbox mode that initially shipped with the Xbox Ally handheld to extra Home windows computer systems “to pick out markets beginning in April,” in addition to Superior Shader Supply, which precompiles shaders so you may obtain them alongside a recreation or its updates, as a substitute of getting to attend once you launch a title.
Ronald says the Microsoft group’s been doing loads of work behind the scenes to make the Xbox mode “really feel distinctly Xbox,” and keep constant as you migrate between units and cloud. He says players play 3-5 video games at anybody time on common, and you need to have the ability to choose up and play whether or not you’re on console, PC, or cloud.
As we spotted outside the keynote, Microsoft desires recreation builders to simply construct as soon as for each Home windows and Xbox, as a substitute of constructing twice for each. It’s making a unified improvement setting the place “The overwhelming majority of code that your recreation runs on Xbox is the very same code that runs on different platforms,” says Ronald.
And whereas he isn’t promising all video games might be this fashion, Ronald suggests that you just received’t have to purchase these video games a number of instances, too: the already-existing Xbox Play Wherever program enables you to purchase as soon as and “play on any display screen,” he says. The catalog of Xbox Play Wherever video games now has greater than 1,500 titles, Ronald says.
As a part of the twenty fifth anniversary of Xbox, the sport preservation group may also re-release an unspecified variety of older Xbox titles underneath its Recreation Preservation program, Ronald says. “As one of many largest publishers within the trade, we really feel a deep duty to protect video games from the previous.” And he hints that “a few of our most iconic first-party franchises are returning this yr.”
Does Recreation Preservation imply traditional Xbox video games are coming to PC? An official summary of his remarks makes it sound like that: “As a part of our twenty fifth anniversary later this yr, we’ll be rolling out new methods to play among the most iconic video games from our previous.” Ronald wouldn’t inform us once we requested him outdoors the venue, solely saying that extra information would come when Microsoft proclaims these twenty fifth anniversary plans.
Picture by Sean Hollister / The Verge
The information follows Microsoft’s latest announcement of the codename for its next-generation console, Challenge Helix, which the corporate says will play both console and PC games. That announcement about Helix was made by new Xbox boss Asha Sharma, who took over as Microsoft’s gaming CEO in February. Former Xbox boss Phil Spencer is retiring, and former Xbox president Sarah Bond, who had been seen as a possible successor to Spencer, also announced her departure.
Final yr, Bond hinted that the next-generation Xbox can be extra like a PC and famous that it might be “a really premium, very high-end curated expertise.” In her first memo since taking up Xbox, Sharma promised a “renewed dedication to Xbox beginning with console,” and in her publish about Helix, Sharma stated the console would “lead in efficiency.” This week, Sharma additionally posted a picture of the unique Xbox prototype, which Microsoft is exhibiting on the GDC Pageant of Gaming. We’ve obtained our own pictures, too.