Project Helix is reportedly launching in the 2028 holiday season and is projected to cost between $1,200 and $1,800.
Fortune recently spoke with Xbox CEO Asha Sharma and other sources familiar with Xbox and Microsoft, with the latter providing details on the current pipeline for Xbox’s next-generation console.
According to these sources, deadlines have been moved up “by at least several months” on Helix, “putting pressure on development teams to get the work done faster, including using AI.
Sharma told Fortune that Xbox won’t use “AI for AI’s sake,” and that it would be used as a tool for engineering and performance issues.
She previously said that Xbox is prioritising “efficiency and affordability alongside performance” for its next-generation console. “All of us need to be thinking about and innovating on and giving people more choice in terms of how they play their console and how they purchase their console.”
Xbox is also reportedly planning to launch a next-gen handheld device by late next year.
Xbox is also reportedly planning a Game Pass overhaul, which may allow players to select “add-ons for console-only games, cloud gaming, and multiplayer, with the system operating on a tiered structure.”
As of July 2026, Xbox Game Pass subscribers totaled less than 50% of the original target. Sharma previously said the company had “bet on Game Pass” as well as “multi-platform and a broader portfolio of content.”
“While those businesses have created meaningful value, they did not grow at the pace we expected. As that happened, our core business weakened, and we added more teams, more investment, and more time, hoping for a better outcome. And now the industry is facing the most severe hardware crisis in history. We must reset Xbox.”
Xbox chief content officer Matt Booty also told Fortune: “If there’s any place that we got out of sync maybe in the last five years, it’s not that any one of those [individual bets] wasn’t working. It’s just that we hadn’t connected the dots maybe as well as we should have.”
Xbox’s restructuring is ongoing, with Fortune reporting that Sharma is planning additional layoffs for this month, November, and January.
“Some employees have appreciated Sharma’s transparency,” the publication wrote, “but the decision to structure layoffs in several waves has left some staff demoralised, feeling as if they are sitting under a yearlong cloud, waiting to see if their roles are eliminated next.”
Rumours of Xbox being prepared for an “eventual sale, spinoff, outside investment, or conversion into a subsidiary” were also highlighted.
Microsoft commercial business CEO Judson Althoff told Fortune that “Asha is one of the best leaders we have at the whole company. We would not have put her on a business we intend to sell. There’s going to be a ton of speculation about all this. Time will tell.”
As for Sharma’s comment on the situation: “I think we’re going to be an important part of Microsoft for a very long time.”