MS exec: Microsoft’s subsequent console will play “Xbox and PC games”

Last summer time, we right here at Ars made the argument that the corporate’s subsequent Xbox console ought to surrender the walled backyard method and simply run Windows already. Now, newly named Microsoft Executive Vice President for Gaming Asha Sharma has strongly hinted that that is certainly the path Microsoft goes, saying its next-generation console will “play your Xbox and PC games.”

In a social media post Thursday afternoon, Sharma stated that “our commitment to the return of Xbox” would come with a brand new console codenamed Project Helix that “will lead in performance and play your Xbox and PC games.” Sharma stated she can be discussing that dedication and that console itself with builders and companions at her first Game Developers Conference subsequent week.

Sharma’s assertion leaves a bit of wiggle room for Project Helix to be one thing apart from a full-fledged Windows-based front room gaming field. The coming console’s entry to PC video games could possibly be restricted to Microsoft’s existing streaming solution via PC Game Pass, as an example, or to video games designed for Microsoft’s own Xbox-branded PC SDK and the PC Xbox app.

Still, a plain studying of Sharma’s assertion means that Microsoft is on the point of open up its subsequent console to an entire Windows set up, with the power to play tens of 1000’s of present PC video games. That doesn’t come as an entire shock, contemplating that Microsoft already used the Xbox title for final 12 months’s Windows-based ROG Xbox Ally (and its considerably console-esque full-screen “Xbox Experience”). Microsoft has additionally been slowly lowering the variety of video games which are totally unique to Xbox consoles, decreasing the worth of a walled-off console platform (Sony, in the meantime, pulled again this week from its current development of releasing first-party titles on PC as effectively). Meanwhile, Valve’s coming Steam Machine is threatening to carry Windows-free PC gaming to residing rooms in all places within the close to future.