Xbox CEO Asha Sharma has called Project Helix a “family of devices” while stressing PC-game compatibility, affordability and hardware efficiency. Microsoft has not said what those devices are, but its next generation is increasingly being described as something broader than a traditional console replacement.
Ask Xbox CEO Asha Sharma whether Project Helix will have a disc drive and she will not tell you.
Ask what the next Xbox generation needs to do differently, though, and the answer is much more revealing.
In a BBC interview from Gamescom, Sharma described Project Helix as a “family of devices”, reiterated Microsoft’s plan for console and PC games on its next-generation Xbox, and said the industry now needs to innovate around “affordability and efficiency” as well as performance.
Put those points together and Helix starts to look less like a straightforward successor box and more like a broader hardware strategy.
That does not tell us what is in the family. Microsoft has not confirmed a cheaper Helix, a second performance tier, a handheld, third-party Helix hardware or any other specific device. It has not announced the price, consumer release date, disc-drive plans or which PC games and stores will work on its next console.
The interesting part is not guessing the family tree. It is how Microsoft’s language around the next generation is changing.
What changed from one console to a family?
When Microsoft properly introduced Project Helix at GDC in March, Xbox VP Jason Ronald described it as the company’s “next-generation first-party console”. Microsoft said Helix would use a custom AMD SoC, push rendering and simulation forward, and be designed to play Xbox console and PC games.
It also said alpha versions of the hardware would begin going to developers in 2027. That is a developer-hardware milestone, not a consumer launch date.
Five months later, Sharma is using broader language: a next generation and a “family of devices for Helix”.
The plural matters, but it is not a licence to fill in the blanks.
Xbox already sells different kinds of gaming hardware and works with outside hardware partners, but Sharma did not say that any existing device category will become part of Helix. She also did not say every future Helix device will share the same capabilities.
What we can say is that Microsoft is no longer talking about its next generation only as one first-party console.
That fits a direction Xbox had already been signalling before Project Helix had a name.
In June 2025, Microsoft and AMD announced a multi-year partnership covering a next-generation lineup across consoles, handhelds, PC, cloud and accessories. Xbox said the companies would co-engineer silicon across a portfolio of devices, while building an Xbox experience that was not tied to one device or one store.
That older “portfolio” should not simply be relabelled as the Helix family. Microsoft has never said they are identical. But Sharma’s new wording makes the wider device strategy much harder to separate from the way Xbox now talks about its next console generation.
PC compatibility is part of the model, not a side feature
The other big clue is PC gaming.
Project Helix was announced with an unusual promise for a console: Microsoft says it is designed to play both Xbox console and PC games.
Exactly what that means remains unresolved. Microsoft has not provided a Helix game-compatibility list or confirmed specific third-party PC stores for the console. It would be premature to translate “PC games” into Steam support or assume every Windows game will simply run.
But the direction is clear enough.
At GDC, Microsoft described Helix alongside a wider effort to break down barriers between console and PC games, make the Xbox experience more consistent across screens and give developers a more unified route to players. Xbox mode, which began on the ROG Xbox Ally handhelds before moving into Windows 11, is another piece of that convergence.
The ROG Xbox Ally is not evidence of a Helix handheld. It is evidence that Microsoft has already been experimenting with a console-like Xbox experience on open Windows hardware.
That matters because a hardware family is easier to understand if Xbox increasingly treats the platform as the common experience, library and development target rather than one fixed box defining everything around it.
The traditional console still matters. Sharma told the BBC that console remains a large part of Xbox’s core, and Microsoft has repeatedly said the first-party Helix console is intended to lead on performance.
The shift is not console versus PC. It is Xbox trying to make the boundary between them less rigid.
Affordability is becoming a design problem
Then there is the cost of building the hardware.
Sharma told the BBC that the next generation has to consider efficiency and affordability alongside performance. When asked what she meant by efficiency, she pointed specifically to hardware: storage, memory, component use and price per unit.
That language has unusually concrete context behind it.
In June, Microsoft published an internal Xbox memo saying the price it paid for console storage components had risen to more than twice the previous autumn’s level, then doubled again. Looking towards the 2027 holiday period, Xbox said it expected another major increase that would take those costs to more than five times what it had paid two years earlier. It said memory costs were following a broadly similar trajectory.
Microsoft also said it was unable to make as many consoles as players wanted to buy and needed a new business model and hardware partnerships while remaining committed to Helix.
Those are Microsoft’s own figures and forecasts, not proof that component inflation caused a particular unannounced Helix design decision.
They do explain why Xbox is now discussing affordability and efficiency in the same breath as next-generation performance.
For decades, the basic console proposition has involved squeezing as much gaming performance as possible into a relatively simple, mass-market box at a price people will accept. When storage and memory costs rise sharply, that balancing act gets harder.
A “family of devices” does not tell us how Microsoft plans to solve that problem. It does tell us Microsoft is thinking beyond a single hardware proposition while Sharma talks about giving people more choice in how they play and purchase a console.
The Xbox generation is becoming harder to define by one box
There is still far more we do not know about Project Helix than we know.
Microsoft has not identified the devices in Sharma’s family. It has not confirmed Series X and Series S-style tiers, a Helix handheld, third-party Helix machines, Steam access, pricing, retail timing or a disc drive. Even the confirmed PC-game ambition needs much more technical detail before we know how broad it really is.
But the public strategy is becoming clearer.
Microsoft has a first-party next-generation console in development. It wants that console to bridge Xbox and PC games. Its AMD roadmap extends across multiple kinds of gaming hardware. Its leadership says the next generation has to balance performance with affordability and hardware efficiency. And now the Xbox CEO is explicitly calling Helix a family of devices.
None of those statements alone defines what the next Xbox generation will look like.
Together, they make the old idea of a console generation as simply one new box replacing the previous one look increasingly incomplete.
Project Helix definitely includes a first-party console. Microsoft has confirmed that much.
The bigger change is that Xbox is starting to describe the generation around it as a family, with PC and console moving closer together while the economics of building high-performance hardware get more difficult.
That is more consequential than simply reporting that Sharma used the word “family”, because it changes what “the next Xbox” may mean in the first place.
