Last summer, we at Ars argued that the company’s next Xbox should abandon a walled-garden design and simply run Windows. Now, newly appointed Microsoft Executive Vice President for Gaming Asha Sharma has strongly suggested that Microsoft may be headed exactly that way, saying the next-generation console will “play your Xbox and PC games.”
In a Thursday afternoon social post, Sharma said “our commitment to the return of Xbox” includes a console codenamed Project Helix that “will lead in performance and play your Xbox and PC games.” She added that she plans to talk about that commitment and the console with developers and partners at her first Game Developers Conference next week.
Sharma’s phrasing leaves room for Project Helix to be something other than a full Windows-based living-room PC. The incoming console’s access to PC titles could be limited to Microsoft’s existing PC Game Pass streaming, for example, or to games built with Microsoft’s Xbox-branded PC SDK and the Xbox app on PC.
Still, a straightforward read of Sharma’s words implies Microsoft may be preparing to let the next console run a full Windows install, enabling it to play tens of thousands of current PC games. That would not be entirely surprising: Microsoft already used the Xbox name on last year’s Windows-based ROG Xbox Ally (and its console-like full-screen “Xbox Experience”). Microsoft has also been gradually scaling back fully exclusive Xbox titles, which reduces the value of a closed-off console ecosystem (Sony, by contrast, this week reversed its recent push to port first-party games to PC). And Valve’s forthcoming Steam Machine is poised to bring a Windows-free PC gaming option into living rooms soon enough, adding pressure on the console space.
