Microsoft’s next console could carry a price of $1,800. A Fortune profile of Xbox CEO Asha Sharma reports that the company’s internal projections place Project Helix between $1,200 and $1,800. No console has ever been sold for that much, so keep the figure in mind as you read the rest of what’s known.
Microsoft does have one way out. According to the report, it could decide to subsidize the hardware and lower the price. Unless that happens, Helix costs four figures, and the high end of that range.
Fortune’s profile also has the most specific launch timing so far: Microsoft is aiming to ship the console for the 2028 holiday season. The report also revives the first-party Xbox handheld that most people had given up on. A “next-generation handheld device” is planned for holiday 2027.
What’s driving the price
The cost comes down to two factors. A worldwide shortage of computer memory is raising prices on all sorts of hardware. On top of that, Microsoft wants a high-performance console that can go up against gaming PCs.
The signs were there. Sarah Bond, a former Xbox executive, described the next Xbox as a “very premium, very high end” device, which is a polite way of saying it would cost a lot. Microsoft also priced the Asus ROG Xbox Ally X handheld at $1,000 not long ago.
What’s surprising is how big the increase is. Moore’s Law is Dead, a YouTuber who covers gaming tech, had guessed the price would probably land between $1,000 and $1,200. The low end of Microsoft’s reported projection is the top of that guess.
Holiday 2028 points to a delay
In early 2026, reports and statements from AMD, which supplies the chips, suggested a launch in late 2027. That would have given the Xbox Series consoles, released in late 2020, the seven-year run that’s normal in the industry.
A holiday 2028 launch means the schedule moved, and there’s an obvious reason. Sony is reportedly delaying PlayStation 6 to 2028 or possibly 2029 because of the RAM crisis. Tech giants building AI datacenters are buying up the world’s computer memory, which is causing chip shortages and price spikes across computing hardware.
Microsoft said in March 2026 that developers would get “alpha” Project Helix hardware in 2027.
A Windows PC built for the living room
Microsoft has confirmed Project Helix will run “your Xbox and PC games.” Reports from several outlets, along with Bond’s public comments, make a strong case that the next Xbox is built on Windows. One report called the Xbox Ally handheld “essentially an early version of what the next Xbox is going to be like.” On the Ally, the Xbox Full Screen Experience puts a console-style layer over Windows, designed for controllers and TVs.
That openness is the upside. Bond has suggested Helix will support other stores and launchers, including Steam and Battle.net, which would give Xbox owners a game library almost too large to imagine.
Windows is the downside. It isn’t a clean or efficient gaming platform, and the Xbox Ally’s uneven performance shows the Full Screen Experience has a long way to go before it matches the speed and reliability of other console interfaces.
Backward compatibility is coming along
At the moment, Windows gaming devices such as the Xbox Ally can’t run Xbox console games. Microsoft says Helix will. When it announced the AMD partnership for the new hardware, Bond promised “compatibility with your existing library of Xbox games.”
Nobody knows yet how Microsoft’s engineers will make that work, but they have to. Beginning with Xbox One, Xbox pushed backward compatibility so hard that Sony and Nintendo had to follow, and players now expect their libraries to move with them to new hardware. Microsoft can’t walk that back.
The games
Naming next-gen Xbox games with any certainty is premature, particularly now that the console’s schedule has already slipped.
What’s clear is that the library won’t resemble any previous console’s. At this price, Helix might have no exclusives, with the Xbox Series X remaining as the entry-level Xbox. What it gets instead is an enormous catalog of PC games, both old and new. Anything that works well with a controller should run.
The biggest Microsoft-published game likely to arrive on Helix is probably The Elder Scrolls 6. A full new Halo from Activision, the series’ new caretakers, would suit a console launch. Among third parties, Larian’s new Divinity looks like a probable next-gen release, and The Witcher 4 could go either next-gen or cross-gen.
Expect a familiar controller
A big redesign is unlikely. The Xbox Series controller was a small revision of the Xbox One pad, and Microsoft’s button layout is about as close to a standard as console and PC gaming have.
Microsoft reportedly has several controller prototypes in the works, one of them a third-generation Elite controller. Across those prototypes are haptic feedback, adaptive triggers, an LED status bar and a direct connection to the cloud. It looks like Microsoft may be trying to match the features of Sony’s PS5 DualSense.
Microsoft is betting on power
There are no official specs yet. All Microsoft has confirmed is that it’s working with AMD again, as Sony is. For the past two generations both companies have used similar AMD architectures, which has made things far simpler for third-party developers.
Project Helix, like PS6, is reportedly based on AMD’s upcoming Zen 6 processor and RDNA 5 graphics. It also shares PS6’s target of 4K at 120 frames per second. (That’s only a target, and many games will fall short of it.)
According to the rumors, Microsoft wants a much bigger lead over Sony this time. Moore’s Law is Dead reported that the final silicon has a larger die than PS6’s, resembles a PC design more than a console one, and will be both more powerful and more expensive than Sony’s console. That fits Bond’s 2024 comment that the Xbox team was aiming for “the largest technical leap you will have ever seen in a hardware generation.”
Selling a machine that’s stronger and pricier than PS6 is a gamble, and no console maker has attempted it in years.
The road to Helix
Xbox’s past six years explain the gamble. Buying Activision Blizzard for $67.9 billion pushed its gaming ambitions to new heights. At the same time, the Series X and Series S, arguably the best consoles Xbox has built, sold badly. They fell behind the unloved Xbox One, let alone PS5 and the Nintendo Switch.
Chaos followed. Leadership changed, there were mass layoffs, and studios were shut down or sold. Microsoft appeared to drop first-party console exclusivity, then partly brought it back. Game Pass bundles and prices keep shifting, and more changes are coming. Microsoft has finally ended the first-party drought that damaged the Xbox One years and the start of the Series era, only to find it lacks a good home for all those games.
Many have forecast the death of Xbox consoles. Microsoft announced another one regardless.
An Xbox handheld returns
Phil Spencer, the former CEO, spoke openly about a handheld made by Xbox. Once Xbox partnered with Asus on the ROG Xbox Ally handheld gaming PCs, the general assumption was that the plan had been dropped. Fortune reports that it hasn’t. A handheld is planned for holiday 2027 at the earliest, and the Windows and Xbox teams have reportedly clashed over how to build its operating system.
Sharma has reportedly described Helix using the phrase “family of devices.” Little else is known about the handheld. It will probably run Xbox console games, which the Xbox Ally can’t. Whether it will also play PC games like Helix is still unknown.