Project Helix is the codename for Xbox’s next console, which will also apparently play PC games, too

The next Xbox console has a codename, and it sounds pretty cool. Its functionality, in theory, may be even cooler.

According to new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma, the next Xbox console is codenamed Project Helix. That’s almost about all we have to go on for now (other than the below teaser image, which she also made into her profile’s header), but she did drop a very interesting tidbit about what it may be like.

“Great start to the morning with Team Xbox, where we talked about our commitment to the return of Xbox including Project Helix, the code name for our next generation console,” she said on Twitter/X this afternoon. “Project Helix will lead in performance and play your Xbox and PC games.”

PC games, huh? That sure sounds a lot like we may be getting that rumored Steam integration on the new Xbox, and that would be a sight to behold. Imagine your Steam library at the ready on the same console that you can play Forza or Gears of War, from the comfort of your couch. But if not Steam, a Windows Store offering PC games to buy for the console seems like a guarantee, at the very least.

There are ways to do all of this console/PC hybrid stuff now, obviously, with different setups like the Steam Deck or Asus ROG Ally X and other handhelds. And Valve’s Steam Machine will be bringing its store, OS, and other functions to a home console design as well, so it appears that’s where we are all headed as an industry.

Sharma said she is “looking forward to chatting about this more with partners and studios at my first GDC next week,” so more info could be revealed soon. But for now, it sounds like we all should expect more of the “all-in-one” strategy from the company and less of its “this is an Xbox” advertising from previous years.

Being realistic here, I shudder to even imagine what the pricing of a console like this would be. The base Xbox Series X is already $650 as it is, and with RAM and GPU shortages seemingly inevitable with no end in sight, this next console could easily cross the $999 mark. At that point, why not just get a PC anyway? It’s tough. And who even knows when it could launch? 2027 at the earliest, maybe, but with RAM issues, maybe it’s best to delay? We shall see.

What are you looking for from the next Xbox? How far can gaming tech truly go nowadays, especially with pricing concerns? Let us know what you think in the comments below.

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Marathon is finally out. The game, which saw huge activity during its free-to-play server slam, replicated its previous success by opening to over 86,000 players, this time at a $40 price tag. Of course, this is being described as a “flop” by some, because we simply cannot have nice things in 2026.

Negative narratives around basically anything nowadays tend to form rather quickly, often propagated by people (and of course bots) who never actually experienced the thing they’re hating. It seems that nowadays, following the “Fall of Concord” back in 2024, games have to blow it out of the park every single time lest they be considered complete failures.

Highguard was a recent example, and even if that game doesn’t really scream quality at the top of its lungs, it certainly didn’t deserve the hate train coming its way, boarded almost exclusively by those without any hours clocked in the title.

And now Marathon is on the chopping block.

During its development, Marathon was marred by problems and hitches. It had several directors swapped out, had a few playtests that weren’t so well-received by those who participated in them, and so on. It crossed out every prerequisite for “development hell,” indicating the actual release would be a terrible experience for Bungie and perhaps the final nail in its coffin.

But that turned out not to be true, even during the server slam. It had over 130,000 concurrent players at that point and has over 86,000 now that the game costs $40 U.S. dollars. Nothing about Marathon tells us that it’s a flop or a failure or even underperforming for that matter.

And those are just the Steam numbers, which I imagine represent about half of its total player base, if not less.

The hate train keeps chugging along, however, no matter what.

While browsing X, I spotted one user arguing that, since Marathon is performing worse than Destiny and the recently released Slay the Spire 2 (which costs about 50 percent less than Marathon), it must be considered a “complete flop of a game” and, of course, as “Concord 3.0″ (the other one being Highguard).

“Marathon is dead on arrival,” another user wrote. Dexerto, a video game outlet, also compared Slay the Spire 2‘s performance to Marathon, saying the former “beats out” Bungie’s shooter, as if the two were ever comparable, both in price and genre.

The narrative is forming and slowly being propagated by so many people and even news outlets, who use superficial arguments to frame a game as a failure despite the fact that it had probably earned over three and a half million USD if we go by Steam’s concurrent numbers alone, which are in fact much larger, especially when consoles are taken into account.

And what’s worse, it’s people who either didn’t play the game or haven’t even seen what it has to offer. Those who did say it’s a good title, with it having 81 percent positive reviews on Steam at the time of writing, which improved as the launch day progressed, and are set to grow as time goes by.

Compare that to Highguard‘s 45 percent and its myriad of regions that have it at mostly negative or even worse. Highguard was also a free game that ended up flopping, whereas Marathon is already raking in a lot of cash that should see it sustained for the foreseeable future.

Online arguments and narratives have become so toxic and tiresome, to the point where I’m almost willing to give up on trying to reason with people and to pragmatically view every single game on a case-by-case basis. Why do we have to go out of our way to frame things negatively before they’re even out or without trying them for ourselves, at least for a little while?

I have every hope that Marathon will succeed and grow into a great game, because as I noted in one of my recent features, its art direction deserves all the praise it can get, as that’d prove to developers that giving a damn about looks (not just in terms of graphics) is crucial for a successful title.

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