There was still one thing that made Microsoft’s console feel distinctly Xbox, but according to the rumors, even that may vanish in the next-generation machine.
Although we still know relatively little about Xbox Project Helix, it already seems clear that the system will differ sharply from both the Xbox One and Xbox Series generations, because its main goal is to bridge the gap between PC gaming and console gaming. Exactly how Microsoft intends to do that is still unclear, but on the hardware side, well-known AMD leaker Kepler_L2 claims that the company is abandoning the final thing that made Xbox feel like Xbox at a hardware level: custom silicon. Writing on the NeoGAF forums, the leaker said Microsoft is not applying any GPU customization at all this time. The PlayStation 6 is still expected to deliver a major leap over the base PlayStation 5, but not on the same level as the tenfold ray tracing jump suggested by AMD’s leaked documents.
The lack of GPU customization, however, will not prevent Xbox Project Helix from running the upscaling, denoising, and frame-generation transformer models in the RDNA 5-based AMD FSR Diamond family, Kepler_L2 added. That may not sound particularly dramatic to the average player, but the disappearance of GPU-level customization from Project Helix still feels like the end of an era. In previous generations, every console had at least some degree of tailored hardware, and that helped each machine distinguish itself from its rivals.
Because this new system appears to be moving even closer to the PC market, the decision could genuinely make life easier for developers when it comes to bringing games to the platform, assuming traditional ports are even necessary. The problem is that it also strips away one of the traits that used to define a console as a console. Back in March, reports suggested the platform was essentially shaping up as a PC that emulates the console experience, and in that context, heavily customized hardware becomes far less important.
With the so-called non-E3 season approaching and the machine reportedly targeting a late 2027 launch, there is at least a chance Microsoft will start saying more about Xbox Project Helix in the months ahead. It would also be useful to learn what kind of price tag would come attached to the rumored fivefold rasterization boost and twentyfold ray tracing increase over the Xbox Series X.
Leave a Reply