Xboxs console endeavors have been a mixed bag, to say the least. The company built a strong reputation with the original Xbox, cemented its dominance with the Xbox 360, began to lose its grip on the market with the Xbox One, and appears to have thrown in the towel fully during the Xbox Series X/S generation, at least when it comes to long-standing industry practices like exclusive games. But Xbox isn't abandoning its hardware ambitions entirely.
The next Xbox console was just announced by the official Xbox Twitter account, which refers to it as Project Helix. Coinciding with this announcement was a tweet from newly anointed Xbox Gaming head Asha Sharma, declaring that “Project Helix will lead in performance and play your Xbox and PC games.” The “lead in performance” bit is to be expected – basically every new console, outside of those specifically marketed as lower-spec budget options, is considered the “most powerful” by its creator. But the comment about playing both Xbox and PC games is interesting, if only for the fact that it essentially confirms something that's been reported 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” might be able to play PlayStation Exclusives
In recent years, Sony has brought several of its most high-profile exclusives to PC, including:
- Ghost of Tsushima
- Marvel's Spider-Man
- Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales
- Marvel's Spider-Man 2
- The 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. Their migration to PC is therefore quite significant, as they are basically the ones selling PlayStation consoles. The working assumption has long been that Sony hasn't seen PC as a competing platform in the same way it sees Switch or Xbox. PC users are probably the least likely to abandon their hardware in favor of a home console, and they represent game sales that Sony is missing out on.
This makes a lot of sense, and the data seems to back it up: 2018's The God of War reportedly sold over 4 million copies on Steam since porting in 2022 – not bad for a four-year-old game. But things get considerably more complicated, especially in the wake of Project Helix's announcement. If the next Xbox can play PC games, according to Steam (that's what the ROG Xbox Ally can do, after all), then that means every PlayStation exclusive that's gotten a PC version will technically be playable on an Xbox device. The idea of playing The last of us or The God of War on a Microsoft home console is a little hard to get used to, but it would be a rewarding win for Xbox, which has ported several of its most high-profile games to the PlayStation in recent years, without giving its own audience anything in return.
Don't get used to the idea of playing PlayStation games on the new Xbox
As it happens, a recent report from Jason Schreier, a long-time industry insider for Bloomberg, claims that Sony will be greatly reducing its PC releases. According to Bloomberg, there are no plans to bring Ghost of Yotei or Sarosone of 2026's most anticipated PS5 exclusives, for PC. Project Helix might be able to run Ghost of Tsushimabut it probably won't run Ghost of Yotei at any time. You might be able to play Return on the device, but not Saros. Schrier's report says Sony's multiplayer game is still expected to launch on PC, however.
Schreier's report says that PC sales of the aforementioned games have not met Sony's expectations, although the impending (if the RAM shortage eases) release of the Steam Machine may have played a role in this decision as well. It's also likely that Sony saw the writing on the wall with regards to the Xbox, sensing, as many consumers have, its pivot to a PC-console hybrid approach. If the public can play PlayStation games on a Valve or Microsoft device, it could undermine the PlayStation brand. This is doubly true if Valve or Microsoft can really compete with Sony on the power and price fronts.
Still, I don't see a reality where Sony actually pulls its existing PC ports from online stores or anything like that. The bell has rung, so to speak, and doing something so radical would probably only serve to generate negative publicity without any real economic or strategic benefit. So Sony seems to be doubling down on their classic exclusive methods, but several of their tentpole releases from the last decade will probably still be available on PC, and thus the next Xbox. It's certainly not what I would have expected the “console wars” to look like for the next generation, but it will be interesting to see unfold.
