Project Helix will be a console capable of running PC games as well, and not a PC that runs console games. This is the line that Jason Ronald, VP of Next Generation at XBOX, has drawn the next generation of XBOX hardware. The new console will openly target an audience accustomed to playing on multiple screens.

The statements come from the pages of 25 Years of Play, the digital magazine with which Microsoft celebrates twenty-five years since the debut of the first XBOX, released in 2001. While the anniversary is celebrated, the focus is already shifting to the hardware to come.

That Helix had to act as a bridge between console and PC has been known for some time, but now XBOX clarifies the priorities: the console experience remains at the center, to which is added the ability to access PC games, and not the other way around. "Helix is designed to be a console that can also run games on your PC, not a PC that can also run console games," Ronald pointed out. The stated goal is to make access to your library simple, intuitive and immediate, without neglecting those looking for something more: hardcore gamers and power users will still be able to go deeper in customizing settings and options related to performance.

According to Ronald, there is a profound change in audience habits behind this choice. In the past, people identified with a specific platform and defined themselves as console or PC gamers, and later mobile or handheld gamers. Today, however, you expect your experiences to work on many different screens.

Hence the focus on the "Alpha Generation", expressly indicated as the target audience. They are young people who grew up between smartphones, touchscreens, multiple devices and streaming services, used to reaching any content from any platform. For them, the executive observed, the idea that content remains tied to a single device is completely foreign, and the same expectations also apply to video games.

In Ronald's vision, the next generation will also give a lot of space to curated and creator-led development. Today, mods and user-generated content exist, but in the future, the barriers to creation are set to lower. This will give us much more freedom and control over experiences: we will be able to create stories within these worlds and share them with other players, in what the executive describes as a new way to play.

It is possible, however, that, to find out how much of this will be realized, we will have to wait a long time: rumors speak of a new portable arriving at the end of 2027, followed by the actual home console a year later, at the end of 2028.