The next-gen version of Microsoft’s Xbox console, codenamed Project Helix, will be a PC-Console hybrid and could be sent out to developers by this time in next year. During a talk at GDC, Xbox’s VP of Next-Gen, Jason Ronald, has revealed that devkits or ‘Alpha versions’ of Project Helix, will start being sent out to developers from 2027, however the key word is ‘Alpha’ which means it’s actually far from the final, consumer product that will be available for buying when the next Xbox finally launches.
And thanks to an image captured during this year’s GDC by Tom Warren, we also have some concrete information on the technical capabilities of the next Xbox as the intended specification of Project Helix was shown as the following:
Powered by Custom AMD SOC
- Co-designed for Next Generation of DirectX
- Next Gen Raytracing Performance & Capabilities
- GPU Direct Work Graph Execution
AMD FSR Next & Project Helix
- Built for Next Generation of Neural Rendering
- Next Generation ML Upscaling
- New ML Multi-Frame Generation
- Next Gen Ray Regeneration for RT and Path Tracing
Deep Texture Compression
- Neural Texture Compression
- DirectStorage & Zstd
This tech related overview presents the sheer graphical horsepower that’s going to be part of the next Xbox which looks highly impressive and when compared to what you can get in the PC platform right now, Project Helix may be equivalent to a high-end GPU like possibly an NVIDIA RTX 5070 or somewhere on that tier. This is judging from the fact that the current-gen consoles are similar to a budget gaming rig in 2026, so comparing today’s hardware with the next Xbox could mean it would likely be similar to one of today’s upper-mid range GPUs that could be equal to a budget range GPU around 3 years from now.
Ronald also said that the GPU in Project Helix will have a marked increase in Ray Tracing performance: “Beyond the SOC, it also includes an order of magnitude increase in ray tracing performance and capability, beyond what’s currently possible with the Xbox Series X and S.”
“It also unlocks GPU-directed work graph execution, eliminating CPU bottlenecks, meaning that the GPU can actually generate its own workload in real-time, delivering a massive uplift in performance and enabling massive real-time simulation and large complex worlds using runtime-generated geometry and large-scale interactive worlds that players actually want to engage with.”
He also confirmed that: “We’re sending alpha versions of Project Helix to developers starting in 2027,” which means by this time in next year, there could be a lot more buzz on the next-gen Xbox from Microsoft.
