XboxConsole efforts have been mixed to say the least. The company built a strong reputation with the original Xbox, cemented its dominance with the Xbox 360, began to lose control of the market with the Xbox One, and appears to have fully thrown in the towel during the Xbox Series X/S generation, at least when it comes to long-standing industry practices like exclusive games. But Xbox isn't completely abandoning its hardware ambitions.
The next Xbox console has just been announced by the official Xbox Twitter account, which it refers to as Project Helix. The announcement was accompanied by a tweet from the newly named CEO of Xbox Gaming, Asha Sharma, in which she stated that “Project Helix will lead the way in performance and play your Xbox and PC games.” A bit of a “performance edge” is to be expected – pretty much every new console, aside from those specifically marketed as lower budget options, is considered by its creators to be “the most powerful”. The comment about both Xbox and PC gaming is interesting, though, if only because it basically confirms something that's been talked about and speculated about for months: the next Xbox will be more or less a console/PC hybrid, which could lead to some very strange results.
The next “Xbox” could play exclusively for PlayStation
Over the past few years, Sony has brought several of its most prestigious exclusives to PC, including:
- Ghost of Tsushima
- Marvel's Spider-Man
- Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales
- Marvel's Spider-Man 2
- God of War
- God of War Ragnarok
- Uncharted 4
- The last of us part 1
- The last of us part 2
If you ask a PlayStation user what some of the best PS exclusives are, there's a good chance they'll name at least one of the above. So their migration to PC is quite significant, because they are the ones that sell PlayStation consoles. The working assumption has long been that Sony doesn't view the PC as a competing platform in the same way it views the Switch or Xbox. PC users are probably the least likely to abandon their hardware in favor of a home console and represent game sales that Sony is losing.
That makes a lot of sense, and the data seems to back it up: 2018 God of War it has reportedly sold over 4 million copies on Steam since its port in 2022 – not bad for a four-year-old game. But things get quite complicated, especially after the announcement of Project Helix. If the next Xbox can play PC games, supposedly from Steam (the ROG Xbox Ally can, by the way), then that means every PlayStation exclusive that received a PC version will technically be playable on an Xbox device. The idea of playing The last of us or God of War it's a little hard to get used to on Microsoft's home console, but it would be a beneficial gain for Xbox, which has been porting several of its most watched games to PlayStation for the past few years and giving its own audience nothing in return.
Don't get used to the idea of playing PlayStation games on the new Xbox
A recent report from Jason Schreier, a longtime Bloomberg insider, claims that Sony will be massively downsizing its PC versions. According to Bloomberg, there are no plans to bring it Ghost of Yotei or Sarosone of the most anticipated PS5 exclusives for 2026, for PC. Project Helix might be able to run Ghost of Tsushimabut it probably won't work Ghost of Yotei at any point. You might be able to play Return on the device, but no Saros. Schrier's report says that Sony's multiplayer games are still expected to launch on PC.
Schreier's report says that sales of the aforementioned games on PC fell short of Sony's expectations, though the impending (if the RAM shortage eases) release of the Steam Machine may have played a role in the decision. It's also likely that Sony saw the writing on the wall with regards to the Xbox and sensed, like many consumers, its key to the PC-console hybrid approach. If viewers could play PlayStation games on Valve or Microsoft devices, it could undermine the PlayStation brand. This is doubly true if Valve or Microsoft can actually compete with Sony on the performance and price fronts.
Still, I don't see the reality of Sony actually pulling their existing PC ports from online stores or anything like that. The bell has rung and to do something so radical would probably only serve to generate negative publicity with no real financial or strategic benefit. So it looks like Sony is doubling down on its classic exclusives, but several of its flagship releases from the past decade will likely still be available on PC, and thus the next Xbox. It's definitely not what I'd expect the “console wars” to look like for the next generation, but it should be interesting to see how it develops.
