The arrival of news about Project Helix from the GDC 2026 stage continues; during the panel "Building for the Future with Xbox", Vice President Jason Ronald shared numerous technical details on the next generation of hardware that promises to definitively unite the console and PC worlds into a single hybrid platform.

Ronald revealed that under the body of Project Helix will run a custom SoC (System-on-a-Chip) based on AMD architecture, co-designed to make the most of the next generation of DirectX. Performance will be driven by cutting-edge technologies for neural rendering and raytracing: we will find support for AMD FSR Next, upscaling through machine learning and multi-frame generation, as well as "next-gen ray regeneration" for path tracing and Ray Tracing. To ensure lightning-fast loads and unprecedented visual efficiency, the neural texture compression technologies, DirectStorage and Zstd, will take care of it.

Summarizing the data released:

Built on custom AMD SOC

• Purpose-built for next-generation DirectX
• Next-generation ray tracing performance and capabilities
• Running the GPU Direct Working Graph
• AMD FSR Next and Project Helix

Designed for next-generation neural rendering

• Next-generation ML upscaling
• Next-generation multi-frame ML
• Next-generation beam regeneration for RT and path tracing

Deep texture compression

• Neural texture compression
• DirectStorage and Zstd

As already reported, however, to see all this materialize we will still have to be patient a little longer, since the very first devkits in alpha version of Project Helix will only be shipped to developers starting from 2027. We will keep you informed about all the news!