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Microsoft plans to begin shipping early units of its next generation console, codenamed Project Helix<\/a>, to game studios starting sometime next year. \u201cWe’re sending alpha versions of Project Helix to developers starting in 2027,\u201c said Jason Ronald, vice-president of next generation for Xbox, according to IGN<\/em><\/a>, which was present at the company\u2019s GDC 2026 presentation where it shared early details about the new device. Ronald did not clarify what he meant by \u201calpha version,\u201d but given the keynote\u2019s developer focus, presumably he meant devkits, which studios could use to start creating games for the new console.<\/p>\n Additionally, Ronald reiterated that the new system would be capable of playing both Xbox console games and PC games, and said it would incorporate a custom AMD-made system-on-a-chip capable of rendering graphics with path tracing. Judging from a slide the company shared, Microsoft and AMD are working on many of the same technologies and capabilities AMD is co-designing with Sony for next PlayStation console<\/a>. For instance, Ronald said Helix would be capable of ray regeneration, a technique designed to produce better-looking ray-traced effects. The new console will also offer multi-frame frame generation and machine learning-based upscaling.<\/p>\n \u201cIt delivers an order of magnitude leap in ray tracing performance and capability, integrates intelligence directly into the graphics and compute pipeline, and drives meaningful gains in efficiency, scale, and visual ambition. The result is more realistic, immersive, and dynamic worlds for players,\u201d Ronald wrote in a blog post<\/a> published after his presentation.<\/p>\n Ronald didn\u2019t speak to any specific compute numbers, likely due to the fact Microsoft has yet to finalize the Helix hardware. We\u2019ll likely learn more of those details the closer we get to 2027.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n