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Xbox Project Helix, information

June 9, 2026 by usatoday24

Several years have passed since Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S They landed in living rooms around the world, and Microsoft is beginning to show the cards for what comes next. Project Helix is the code name for the next generation of Xbox, a console that, judging by how little (and how much) is already known about it, is not going to be too similar to what the company has offered us so far. Under these lines we bring together everything we know about the next generation of Xbox to date. What is Project Helix? Project Helix is the official codename for the next-generation Xbox console. Microsoft confirmed it publicly in March 2026, when Asha Sharma, the new CEO of Xboxwho came to office after the Phil Spencer’s retirement At the end of February, he announced it through his X account. According to counted Sharma at the time, the console “will lead in performance and play your Xbox and PC games.” As is common in the industry, this is not a definitive brand name. As happened with Project Scarlett and Lockhart, which eventually became Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S respectively, Project Helix will receive another name when Xbox confirms it. Until then, this is how we will refer to the device. What has been clear from the beginning is that Microsoft has ambitions that go well beyond a simple generational update. According to Jason Ronaldvice president of Xbox’s next-generation division, the team has been working hard on the hardware for some time and at GDC 2026 in March confirmed that they are “in full development” of the console. What type of console is it? This is perhaps the most striking feature of Project Helix, and the one that has generated the most stir in the industry. Unlike its predecessors, the console will not only run Xbox games, but It will also be able to run PC titles. And supposedly not only from the Microsoft store, but also from other digital platforms such as Steam or GOG natively. Microsoft has been moving towards the idea that “everything is an Xbox” for some time, erasing the boundaries between console and PC. Project Helix would be the most ambitious materialization of that philosophy. Ronald himself counted already at GDC that “the days when people defined themselves as console, PC or mobile gamers really don’t exist anymore.” Xbox Series X For developers, Microsoft is preparing a unified development kit (GDK) that will allow them to release a single version of a game and reach both console and PC users, something that would considerably reduce the effort of studios to adapt their games to multiple platforms. According to Wccftechthe user interface will be built around an evolved version of the Xbox Full Screen Experience, similar to what already exists on laptops ASUS ROG Xbox Ally. In addition, in April 2026, the so-called “Xbox Mode” began to be deployed in Windows 11, a full-screen, controller-optimized experience that acts as a preview of the Project Helix environment. It is only available on Windows 11 and serves both to mature the ecosystem and to familiarize PC players with what is to come. What are its technical specifications? Microsoft and AMD have been deliberately brief with specific numbers, preferring to talk about design philosophy rather than TFLOPS. But what has been officially confirmed, combined with what internal sources have revealed, already offers a fairly clear profile of the hardware. What is officially confirmed: AMD Custom SoC: Project Helix will be built on a custom chip designed jointly by Microsoft and AMD. AMD Senior Vice President Jack Huynh confirmed which uses the RDNA 5 GPU architecture and is manufactured in TSMC’s 3 nanometer process, which represents a huge leap in efficiency compared to the 7 nm of the Xbox Series X. New generation of DirectX and FSR Diamond: The console is co-designed for the next generation of DirectX. AMD has also confirmed that Project Helix will incorporate FSR Diamond, its new scaling and frame generation platform, which integrates a dedicated NPU for multi-frame generation, neural texture compression and neural rendering. dedicated NPU: The console includes a Neural Processing Unit integrated directly into the SoC, independent of the GPU and CPU, to handle all artificial intelligence-driven rendering tasks. Next level ray tracing:Microsoft has described Project Helix’s ray tracing performance as “an order of magnitude jump” over the current generation. This is supported in part by the new RDNA 5 architectures, which include so-called “Radiance Cores”, a specific hardware block for ray tracing, and “Neural Arrays”, a new approach to grouping GPU computing units as a unified artificial intelligence engine. What the leaks point out: Known leakers such as Moore’s Law Is Dead and KeplerL2 have stated on several occasions that the chip is internally called “Magnus” and would have: CPU: Hybrid design with up to 11 cores, with up to 3 high-performance Zen 6 cores and up to 8 efficiency Zen 6c cores. The frequencies of the performance cores are estimated to be in the range of 5.5-6 GHz. This would represent a huge generational leap over the Xbox Series X’s Zen 2 cores. GPU: 68 RDNA 5 compute units. Although only a 30% increase in units over the 52 Series Memory: GDDR7, according to industry analysts. According to Wccftech, if these leaks are correct, Project Helix could offer between 5 and 6 times the rasterization performance of Xbox Seriesand up to 20 times in ray tracing. However, we have no choice but to wait for official information to corroborate these data. When is Project Helix coming? There is no official date. What Microsoft has confirmed in the latest GDC is that the development units in the alpha phase will begin to arrive at the studios from 2027. From there, the calendar is speculative. The launch window that industry sources most point to is end of 2027although some analysts do not rule out 2028 either. In part, this will depend on when exactly the development kits arrive … Read more

Microsoft killed the traditional Xbox by saying that everything was an Xbox. Now he wants to resurrect it with Project Helix

March 12, 2026 by usatoday24

Microsoft has quietly withdrawn its “This is an Xbox” campaign, the initiative with which it had spent 16 months trying to convince the world that any device (television, mobile phone, tablet) It was technically an Xbox.. The deletion coincides with the replacement at the top managementthe debut of Project Helix at GDC and a market paradox: Sony and Microsoft have become, at the same time, the main defenders of the concept “a console is a console.” The campaign. The series of ‘This is an Xbox’ ads were launched under the presidency of Sarah Bond and functioned as the great manifesto of the post-hardware era of Microsoft Gaming. Now it has disappeared without an official statement: the blog entry that opened it on Xbox Wire gives error 404and searching for the term in the official Xbox news repository only returns one article about ROG Xbox Ally. The files indicate that the page was still accessible on March 1, 2026. What was it about? The idea behind “This is an Xbox” was, in theory, reasonable: expand the ecosystem beyond its own hardware, bet on the streaming in the cloud as a gateway and normalize that playing Xbox did not require purchasing an Xbox console. The problem is that the argument, taken to its extreme, destroyed the reason for the hardware. The campaign generated more confusion than interest, with fans wondering why they would buy an Xbox if the titles were available on any platform. The rejection. Apparentlythe initiative was not well received internally, and the company made some strategic lurches. For example, the announcement of an Xbox mobile store in summer 2024 never materialized. A few months later, with the arrival of Asha Sharma as the new CEO of Microsoft Gaming and the departure of Phil Spencer and Sarah Bond, the campaign has ended up being withdrawn. The phrase with which Sharma summed up this new change of direction speaks for itself: “The plan is the plan until it isn’t“. More from Helix. The same day that the 404 of “This is an Xbox” was discovered, Microsoft had a presence at GDC 2026 with the Developer Summit dedicated to Project Helix. Jason Ronald, vice president of Next Generation at Xbox, presented the technical details of the upcoming hardware: a console powered by a custom AMD SoC, co-designed for next-generation DirectX and FSR technology, and which the company describes as “an order of magnitude leap” in gaming performance. ray tracing: pscaling Next Generation ML, ML Multi-Frame Generation and Ray Regeneration for games with path tracing The technical details that AMD provided completed the picture: the custom chip is built on RDNA 5 architecture and TSMC’s 3nm process, and incorporates a dedicated NPU that will power all advanced rendering capabilities, including FSR Diamond. Developer alpha kits will begin shipping in 2027, and the company is committed to maintaining compatibility with games from four generations of Xbox. Not everything is perfect. The complicating point in the “return to consoles” story is that Microsoft told the developers at GDC that “build for PC” is the correct approach going forward, suggesting that Project Helix is, at heart, a PC disguised as a console. That is, it is closer to the ambitious project of Valve with its Steam Machine that of the Sony gives up making more PC games. In addition, Xbox Mode will arrive on Windows 11 in April, bringing the console experience directly to the desktop PC, and the Play Anywhere catalog already exceeds 1,500 titles. The Sony thing. It is commented that Sony is returning to the old strategy of exclusives as a hardware sales lever after the PC ports did not work as expected. Part of the problem was one of timing: games arrived on PC months or years after the console launch, making it difficult to build a stable audience on the platform. There is Steam data very significant: ‘Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered’, for example, reached a peak of just 66,000 simultaneous players, a figure that did not justify the continued investment in big-budget game ports. Sony and Microsoft, two companies that took opposite paths in the last generation (one opening up to the PC, the other trying to dissolve the very idea of the console), have simultaneously reached the same conclusion. A console is a console, and hardware has to have value. In Xataka | “We will not flood our ecosystem with soulless AI garbage.” We already know what Asha Sharma wants to do as CEO of Microsoft Gaming

its new Project Helix is a direct torpedo to Valve’s Steam Machine

March 6, 2026 by usatoday24

Microsoft has revealed the code name of its next-generation console, a hybrid system between console and PC that will be able to run games from both ecosystems. Project Helix arrives at a turbulent time for the industry: global RAM memory crisis, Valve fighting to launch its own Steam Machine and PlayStation rethinking its presence on PC. Helix Project. Asha Sharma, new CEO of Xboxhas announced that the next Microsoft console receives the internal name of Project Helix. Sharma assured that the device will be a leader in performance and will allow you to play both Xbox and PC titles, thus confirming the rumors that have been circulating for months about hardware that blurs the line between both platforms. The next Game Developers Conference, between March 9 and 13, will be the scene of the first conversations with partners and developers. What does it have? Beyond Sharma’s statements we can scratch some more information: the heart of the system is a semi-custom SoC from AMD whose internal code name is Magnus. According to AMD CEO Lisa Su, during the presentation of fourth quarter results As of 2025, development of the chip is progressing well to support a 2027 launch. Leaks point to a combination of Zen 6 CPU cores and an RDNA 5-based GPU, with up to 48GB of GDDR7 memory. These are specifications that, if the estimates so far are correct, would exceed those of the future. PlayStation 6. How it works. The device will essentially function as a gaming PC whose main interface will be the Xbox Full Screen Experience, already released on the ASUS Xbox Ally laptop. From this interface, designed to replicate the simplicity of a console, the user can choose to jump to the Windows 11 desktop and install Steam, Epic Games Store, GOG, Battle.net or any other software from the Microsoft ecosystem. PCs of a lifetime. That Xbox is a PC at its core is not a new idea. The original 2001 console already had an Intel Pentium III and an Nvidia GPU, a configuration much closer to the computer world than to the proprietary chip that defined Sony or Nintendo consoles at that time. All subsequent generations have maintained the x86 architecture, and both Xbox One as Xbox Series X They use AMD SoC with architecture shared with Ryzen and Radeon. What changes with Helix is the software layer: where before the operating system was a closed environment, now there is a complete Windows under the shell. Listen, Valve. The comparison with this console that immediately comes to mind is Valve’s Steam Machine, announced in November as a compact desktop PC powered by SteamOS, the Linux-based operating system that already powers the Steam Deck. Valve works in the opposite direction than Helix: part of the Steam catalog, it works on Linux and offers the possibility of installing Windows as a secondary option. The destiny of both machines is the same: to dynamite the boundaries between console and desktop PC. Valve suffers. The Steam Machine is going through its own ordeals. Valve announced in February a delay in its release schedule (originally, first quarter of the year) and the need to review the price, citing the global shortage of memory and storage as the cause. The analysts They project a price of between $400 and $500 as the optimal range, although the most recent estimates raise the range above $750, a territory that distances it from direct competition with Sony and Microsoft consoles. Valve, which has ruled out selling hardware at a loss, is at the mercy of the components market. The memory crisis Due to the demands of the AIs, it is the great backdrop of this battle. Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron have turned their production lines towards high-margin HBM memory consumed by artificial intelligence data centers, leaving DRAM and NAND Flash destined for the consumer market in the background. The consequences are already being felt: manufacturers such as Lenovo, Dell, HP and ASUS have warned of increases of between 15% and 20% in the price of their equipment for this year. Exclusive worlds. The franchises that for decades defined Xbox’s identity have begun to come to PlayStation, a decision that Sharma herself has acknowledged wanting to review. Meanwhile, Sony abandons publishing games on PCwith the intention of reinforcing the attractiveness of its exclusives. But Xbox is betting on the opposite. It seems clear that Sharma (who has no experience in the video game industry) does not conceive Helix as a traditional console, but as a platform whose success will depend on alliances with digital stores and the integration of services such as Game Pass. In Xataka | There is brutal competition for our attention. And there is someone losing that battle in a bloody way: the consoles

NASA has just shared some impressive images of the Helix Nebula like we have never seen it before.

January 25, 2026 by usatoday24

If there were a nebula popularity contest, that of the Propeller It would be at the top: it is one of the brightest and closest to Earth, located about 650 light years from the Solar System, in the constellation of Aquarius. However, the fact that it was discovered more than two centuries ago and its resemblance to the “Eye of Sauron” have made it one of the most photographed in history. Over the years the Hubble space telescope has captured some of the most iconic images of the Helix Nebula, like the one you can see just below these lines, but the new images that NASA has just published of the James Webb They are simply on another level. If you like astronomy and want to renew your desktop background, here are some great candidates. One of the most iconic images of the Helix Nebula, made by Hubble. POT The reason is not so much because of the nebula itself, it is that the difference in sensitivity and sharpness is abysmal compared to the veteran Hubble and the retired Spitzer, as you can see in this video. The key is the size of their “eye” (the mirror) and the type of light they detect. Thus, while Hubble observes mainly in the visible and ultraviolet, with a 2.4-meter mirror, Spitzer was a pioneer of the infrared with a much smaller mirror, 0.85 meters, which limited its resolution. The James Webb combines the best of both approaches: with a 6.5-meter mirror and extraordinary infrared sensitivity, it achieves unprecedented resolution in that range of the spectrum and is capable of passing through interstellar dust. In image quality it plays in another league. The Webb Space Telescope photographs the Helix Nebula in spectacular detail The correct term to refer to this nebula is “planetary nebula”, which does not clarify very well what we have in front of us: they are not formed from planets, but from stars like the Sun. When their life is running out, these stars emit large amounts of gas in an envelope that expands in a grandiose but “brief” phenomenon (in cosmo, not terrestrial units). It is, in a nutshell, like glimpse the possible final destiny of the Sun and our planetary system. This new image highlights comet-like knots, strong stellar winds, and layers of gas released by a dying star as it interacts with its environment. Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI; Image processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI) The image obtained with Webb’s NIRCam (Near Infrared Camera) that you see just above shows a kind of pillars that look like comets with elongated tails, tracing the circumference of the internal region of an expanding gas envelope, explains NASA. The image shows “scorching winds of hot, fast-moving gas from the dying star colliding with slower, cooler layers of dust and gas ejected earlier in its life, sculpting the nebula’s extraordinary structure.” Webb’s near-infrared vision highlights these knots against the ethereal image from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, and thanks to the higher resolution, the focus is much sharper than ever. Additionally, this infrared vision makes it possible to clearly visualize the transition between the hotter and colder gas as the envelope expands. The Helix Nebula from the Visible and Infrared Telescope for Astronomy located on Earth (left) in front of Webb’s field of view (right). Image: ESO, VISTA, NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, J. Emerson (ESO); Acknowledgment: CASU Outside the Webb’s frame, you can see the white dwarf in the center of the nebula (its nucleus), which emits very strong radiation. This energy works like a kind of flashlight that illuminates the surrounding gas in different chromatic layers depending on the temperature: the blue area is the closest and hottest, the coldest is red at the edge, where the gas mixes with dust. In the middle, the intermediate area in yellow, where atoms begin to join together to form molecules. The most striking thing on a technical level is that to date, Spitzer images only hinted at the formation of these molecules, but the resolution of the Webb allows us to see precisely those dark and protected “pockets” between the bright orange and red tones: it is where complex molecules are being manufactured. This interaction is essential insofar as it constitutes the raw material from which some day new planets could form in other star systems. In Xataka | NASA has published 96 fantastic posters of the universe that you can download for free in HD In Xataka | The first images from NASA’s new satellite offer us a completely different view of the oceans Images | POT

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