Path tracing and latest generation FSR
Everything is an Xbox but the future Project Helix in particular. Already put in the spotlight to announce the color of Xbox’s future, we don’t officially know anything very specific about Microsoft’s next machine, other than support for the rapprochement between Xbox and PC as well as the partner with AMD.
The holding of GDC 2026, the “business to business” exhibition, in San Francisco was an opportunity to reveal the first information. It was Jason Ronald, head of Xbox’s New Generation unit, who organized a presentation on this subject. And one of the most important points discussed was of course the power of the console, based on this famous partnership with AMD. As we can also read on the Xbox Wire side, the console will feature a custom AMD SoC chip, co-designed for the next generation of DirectX.
A choice made with the aim of offering “an order of magnitude leap in performance and ray tracing capabilities”. Light management technology is obviously the number 1 argument, even mentioning the path tracingan even more advanced version capable of managing each light source in real time. When we know that a ray tracing quality on console is certainly not a standard, with in addition often necessary compromises, the question arises about the growing need for resources that this implies.
And on this side, Project Helix will count on FSR Diamond, the latest generation of upscaling recently announced by AMD, capable of further improving image fluidity and resolution, notably from multi-image generation by machine learning. In other words, Project Helix intends to reduce the border with the rendering of high-end PCs thanks to AI technologies (and not generative).
A planned release for 2028?
The beast therefore promises to be ambitious, and if we already hear crazy price hypotheses with wet fingers, let’s recognize that this console/PC hybridization will probably rush into the breach opened by the PS5 Pro and its €799.
Now, the interest is above all to prepare the development teams for this architecture and, in this regard, alpha versions of Project Helix will begin to be sent from 2027. A definitive release of the console could therefore be envisaged more easily around 2028. Unless things accelerate very quickly and the end of the year 2027 is also a possibility.
In any case, and we will never stop thinking about it: the prospect of a new generation of console has probably never been so unexciting since the start of the match between PlayStation and Xbox. But who knows, we just want to be surprised.