Project Helix

There’s not a lot of confidence on the Xbox homefront, when the CEO of Microsoft Gaming, Phil Spencer, stepped down, followed by Sarah Bond resigning (after she was passed up for Spencer’s job) in mid-February 2026.

Then it was announced that Asha Sharma has been appointed the new CEO of Xbox. I don’t have a lot of confidence in their decision. She doesn’t play games and she comes from being in charge of Microsoft’s AI.

Yesterday, Sharma made breaking news by announcing Project Helix, the next generation Xbox Console.

Great start to the morning with Team Xbox, where we talked about our commitment to the return of Xbox including Project Helix, the code name for our next generation console.

Project Helix will lead in performance and play your Xbox and PC games. Looking forward to chatting about this more with partners and studios at my first GDC next week!

While I should be excited, I am not. Xbox’s downturn started a few months when they raised the price of Game Pass. To be honest, I’ve been long out of it since ROG Xbox was released at $1,000 – I knew they had priced me out the platform.

Another thing that has left a sour taste in my mouth was something that happened to me recently. I bought some “Games Anywhere” titles from Xbox and so I have the Xbox app installed on multiple computers that I own. One day, I tried to launch one of the games on Xbox and guess what? It wouldn’t run because that computer was not connected to the internet. The game was already installed and previously ran fine when it was connected to the internet. So, this is the problem with ‘games anywhere’… in order for Xbox to validate you own the game, it needs to be checked against their database online. I’ve had this problem in the past, so it shouldn’t have surprised me… yet it is a reminder that I constantly have to be connected.

You can get around this if you set your device to offline – however, the problem is that Xbox will only allow you to set one (ONLY ONE) device to offline mode. JUST ONE. And to add insult, you can only do this once a year or something. It’s totally awful, the way Xbox treats its users.

The offline thing is the final straw for me, so I’ve largely abandoned the Xbox platform. Instead, I’ll be investing in GOG (GOG doesn’t have DRM at all) and Steam (less restrictive DRM – you can set a lot of devices to offline). You see, I’m not on a reliable internet service. Sometime I’m not online, sometime I am not.

At the end of the day, at least for me, it really depends on its price. I can tell you one thing – I’m not interested in paying more than $600 for it. If it is priced anything higher, I would rather take that money and buy a Macbook Neo (Apple’s budget Macbook) or a Steam Machine (assuming they can keep the price down).

The rumor is that Project Helix will basically be a PC that can play Xbox games… but you have to option to run Epic Games or Steam. What is the difference now with the Xbox App on my Lenovo Legion Go? Well right now, the Xbox App can only play Xbox “PC” games. I own a lot of regular Xbox Games that is not available to me via their app. If Xbox can make it available for me to run games I already own, I will be very happy – if that is what Helix promises.