Microsoft’s next Xbox, Project Helix, won’t reach alpha until 2027

We’re here at the 2026 Game Developers Conference, where Microsoft “VP of Next Generation” Jason Ronald is talking about a topic near and dear to many gamers’ hearts: the future of Xbox. Ronald says the next Xbox, codenamed Project Helix, will have a custom AMD chip with “an order of magnitude increase in raytracing performance” up to and including path tracing, and a next-gen version of AMD’s FSR upscaling technology that relies on machine learning and includes frame generation — which can improve the perceived smoothness of a game by imagining new frames between existing ones.

But don’t expect that next Xbox soon: Microsoft will begin sending out “alpha versions” of Project Helix to developers in 2027, Ronald revealed here at GDC.

Ronald also confirmed that Xbox and Windows are getting closer together, beyond the fact that Project Helix will play PC games too. “PC is becoming an increasingly…