Xbox reveals new details about Project Helix and the future of the group
GDC, or what was formally known as that and is now the GDC Festival of Gaming, is a place where game developers from around the world go to, in order to meet fellow creators, learn insights on game design and more, I mean it is called the Game Developers Conference after all. Xbox were on hand this year delivering updates on their plans for the future.
We will get to Project Helix in a moment, but let’s talk about what is coming before then, first up with April. Yes next month will see an update on Windows 11 for gamers, where Xbox mode will begin to roll out. All the updates come from Jason Ronald, Vice President of Next Generation, Xbox.
“Xbox mode lets players seamlessly switch between productivity and play, with a familiar full screen and controller optimized Xbox experience while embracing the openness of Windows”
If you have seen or played on the recent ROG Xbox Ally or ROG Xbox Ally X devices, then Xbox mode may not be unfamiliar. It is basically a way for Windows to stop letting non-gaming tasks running, giving precedents to games rather than Excel, or any other program. Don’t think this makes your PC a Xbox, it is still the computer, but Xbox mode just makes gaming the priority. Now this is going to roll out in select markets first, so Australia may not get it right away, but we could also be one of the first, we just need more details.
Xbox will officially turn 25 years old in November 2026 and the team have some plans for that. Now this is not the general Xbox marketing folks, but rather the actual hardware makers. Now they have not released specifics, but they did say:
“We’ll be rolling out new ways to play some of the most iconic games from our past”
That statement, if taken at face value could mean you can use old controllers on your Xbox Series X, but it more than likely means that more platforms are going to be supported, likely cloud gaming for more games. Sadly, until they actually tell us, we will have no way of knowing what they mean, but I am sure they will say soon rather than later.
Right, all that is this year, but what about the future? Well Project Helix was a big talking point of the presentation, I mean the panel was called “Xbox Developers Summit Keynote: Building for the Future with Xbox.” Fancy name aside, let’s talk about what was revealed.
“Project Helix is designed to play your Xbox console and PC games, delivering leading performance and ushering in the next generation of console gaming.
As part of our multi-year partnership with AMD, we are shaping the future of rendering and simulation. Project Helix is powered by a custom AMD SoC and co-designed for the next generation of DirectX and FSR to unlock what comes next.
It delivers an order of magnitude leap in ray tracing performance and capability, integrates intelligence directly into the graphics and compute pipeline, and drives meaningful gains in efficiency, scale, and visual ambition. The result is more realistic, immersive, and dynamic worlds for players.”
As you can see from that statement, the team are looking at leveraging some cutting edge tech, along with some stuff not yet developed. The plan, at least as of right now, is to have alpha dev kits in the hands of folks beginning in early 2027, which is nice to know.
Something that was not called out in the quote above is that they are looking at texture compression, because as games get better looking, texture sizes increase and games get larger and larger. A good example of this is Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox, the game is over 100gb, whereas on Nintendo Switch 2 the game will be 60gb. That all comes down to the lower texture quality on the Nintendo version of the game, the DLSS upscaling will still make them look as good as the others. If Xbox can crack texture compression in a way that makes sense, we might start seeing game sizes drop, because 100gb every 12 months for Call of Duty is just not going to be sustainable.
In an area around their booth, Xbox did also reveal “next-gen game preservation” which highlights that backwards compatibility is coming to the next console. We have no idea in which manner that is going to be, it could be cloud streaming only, it could be digital downloads or something else entirely, but it is nice to know it is planned.
So that is what we know, you can read the full Xbox Wire post here, and while the future sounds promising, Xbox will have a tough hill to climb to ensure players are willing to come over to them once more.
Are you excited for the future of Xbox? Let us know your thoughts.
