The next Xbox will officially be a PC and that could be great

It had been mentioned in passing before but it is finally official, so filling the gaps is all it will take now: Asha Sharma, the new head of Xbox, provided two noteworthy pieces of information regarding the direction Microsoft will be taking in the gaming space, as part of a brief update on Twitter. She confirmed that the next Xbox console will play both Xbox and PC games and revealed that this device falls under the name “Project Helix”. We may know more about it during the Game Developers Conference next week.

This is interesting for two reasons. One: we now have a name for the next Xbox console, whenever it’s planned to arrive, just like we did with “Project Scorpio” for the Xbox One X back in 2017. Two: this tweet is official word the next Xbox console will in fact retain compatibility with the current Xbox library while also being able to play PC games – games, one must assume, bought on Steam or EGS or other places, since that’s where consumers shop for all PC titles not developed by Xbox Game Studios (or even for those too).

So how will the next Xbox play PC games too?

On a technical level, this can only be done if the next Xbox is not based on some “core” or cut-down or special version of Windows, but on the regular, mainstream desktop OS – which is pretty much what Sarah Bond mentioned last year and Satya Nadella confirmed in a recent Microsoft internal meeting. What will the company be doing in order to get there? Probably this: it will be tuning Windows 11 in terms of resource management and fixing the user interface currently known as Full Screen Experience, until the former can work invisibly in the background in a reliable manner and the latter can be properly, exclusively used with a joypad.

At the same time, Microsoft will most probably be developing – if it hasn’t already – an “emulation layer” for Windows 11 which could work like a dedicated, bespoke virtual machine: that is, it would let the core OS of past Xbox consoles “boot” and “run” inside a protected memory space within the next Xbox’s system memory, in such a way that would be invisible to consumers but native to past Xbox game code.

The company’s future console would then be able to run basically every Xbox Series S/X game, as well as all the OG Xbox, Xbox 360 and Xbox One games included in the backwards compatibility list built for the current Xbox systems. This would allow Xbox fans to “bring forward” the digital libraries they’ve built over the years and Windows users to enjoy some high-quality past Xbox games on their PCs.

Some believe that Microsoft will end up making this an exclusive feature of Windows 12. That could indeed prove to be the case but, honestly, if this approach can work on Windows 11 without issues, it would make sense to add such functionality to that OS too. Windows 11 may be a lost case in the eyes of many, but there will be a lot of PCs out there capable of playing past Xbox titles by 2027, so…

The elephant in the room: the software side of things

An Xbox that can play PC games – or a living room PC that can play Xbox games, it all depends on one’s point of view – has been extensively discussed online for months now, by both defenders and haters of such an idea. How such a product would affect the gaming industry and what it could mean for console gamers, PC gamers or even mainstream consumers in general should obviously be examined in a different article: there are simply too many important pieces of the puzzle currently missing to have that discussion.

An issue that anyone could raise right now, though, is this: can Microsoft actually do this? Is this company capable of successfully building a bridge between a Windows PC and a gaming console, one that would allow players to enjoy the best of both worlds at long last? The Xbox hardware, you see – as described by Microsoft itself as “premium” and “leading in performance” – is not the problem: it will be powerful enough to emulate past Xbox consoles with ease and, if information leaks about its specs are accurate, it could even give proper gaming PCs a run for their money (provided the product built around it is not outrageously expensive).

No – it’s not the hardware but the software side of things that’s the problem here, because this is Windows we are talking about. In order for such a hybrid product as this Xbox PC to succeed, it would need to be as rock-solid, simple and fast in operation as consumers have come to expect from a games console, while still being able to “exit to the desktop” effortlessly so that other storefronts can be managed and the system can be updated and maintained over time. Microsoft has made such a mess of Windows 11 so far, though, on all fronts, that it’s a challenge to keep a regular PC working properly and efficiently these days, let alone a games console – let alone a games console that will have to emulate other game consoles.

This is clearly evident in the state of the Xbox Full Screen Experience as featured on the Xbox ROG Ally X: not only is the user interface in dire need of a redesign, but the switching between that and the Steam Big Picture Mode, or between that and the Windows desktop, is just clunky and jarring and not at all intuitive. There is so much work to be done before Microsoft even attempts to call Windows 11 a true games-friendly operating system for mainstream consumers, that it’s almost annoying to hear the company’s executives talk about it as if it was such an easy thing to pull off. Because, frankly, it isn’t.

There’s a number of other issues raised by the use of Windows as an operating system for a mainstream consumer gaming system to begin with: issues about security, issues about privacy, issues about the gathering and storing of personal information… the list is long – and don’t even get yours truly started on that AI functionality nobody asked for. These are all issues created by Microsoft itself over the span of two decades. What’s more, they are issues the company has repeatedly failed to address because it simply does not want to.

Even if one was willing to set these issues aside, Microsoft still hasn’t provided proof that it can truly optimize Windows for gaming from a resource management and performance standpoint. That, coupled with all the work needed on the user interface, digital storefront integration and emulation fronts, makes this a software challenge Microsoft currently seems unable to face. Come 2027 we’ll finally get to find out, no?