Asha Sharma, the recently installed chief executive officer of Microsoft Gaming and the new head of Xbox following Phil Spencer’s retirement, has just teased the next-generation Xbox console in a post on her personal X (formerly Twitter) account, which we now know is codenamed Project Helix.
Sharma shared the codename and what appears to be a new look for the Xbox logo, while also teasing that this new console will “lead in performance and play your Xbox and PC games,” seemingly confirming reports that the next generation of consoles from Xbox will be a hybrid between a PC and console, capable of playing games from both libraries.
This is definitely sooner than we would’ve expected Sharma to start talking about the next-generation of consoles for Xbox, though it also is seemingly part of Sharma trying to prove her commitment to “the return of Xbox,” a notion that she’s belaboured since she was named to the role a little less than two weeks ago from the time of this writing.
In another timeline, one where rising memory costs didn’t have consumers wondering if they’ll have to take out loans to afford a new computer, and where Microsoft didn’t have consistent revenue declines in its hardware for multiple quarters in a row, it would be exciting to hear comments like the new console looking to be the leader in hardware performance.
Instead, it’s a reminder that whatever Project Helix is becoming, there’s a good chance it’ll be incredibly expensive, and with so many players already in PlayStation’s ecosystem (if they haven’t already made the switch to PC), it’s difficult to see how even a super-powered new device turns things around on the hardware front.
While it certainly wouldn’t be player-friendly, if Xbox takes a page out of PlayStation and Nintendo’s books and tries to pull back towards exclusive games, that could be the thing to turn the tide towards players finding a reason to spend the money on Project Helix. If it could really be the best of both worlds between a console’s pick-up-and-play convenience with the freedom to play your full PC library, and it has exclusive games, then the next generation of consoles could belong to Xbox. But, at least for now, that’s a pretty big ‘if.’
Gen Xbox, Promises it Will “Lead in Performance and Play Your Xbox and PC Games”
