betterthings

@Nakatomi_Uk The box is too small for the Project Helix prototype. This is something small but clearly fragile or something exposed.

@FraserG there is very little evidence to support the claim that it will simply be the same value as the gift cards, or that the value of gift cards will remain the same. Instead, they keep devaluing it, evident in the recent history of rewards program.

I don't know if someone at Xbox ever thought of creating an ecosystem of devices where you can take the Xbox card out of Helix in your living room, insert it into an Xbox portable as move to a different room/travel and resume playing. This is exactly what Steam is going to offer between its Deck, Machine, and Frame devices through microSD. The Xbox card instead offers SSD speed without compromising on portability. I always wonder if Microsoft's Cloud ambitions curb these pro-consumer convenient features that work for local devices.

@Tdx @RegnumSolipsi @Millionski I believe we are witnessing a change in strategy for GamePass. For every month, this year, they removedway less games than they added. This is likely to make the Premium tier "the best deal in gaming" that Ultimate once was, while avoiding the loss of sales that result from offering day one games on the Ultimate or their biggest money-maker, Call of Duty. This, I think, is the reason why they made Ultimate's price inaccessible for most players and kept premium at the same price. I only see them making day one games inaccessible to most gamers through subscriptions and that I think will likely result in them retiring PC GamePass within the next 2 years.

I believe we are witnessing a change in strategy for GamePass. For every month this year, they are removing way less games than they are adding. This is likely to make the Premium tier "the best deal in gaming" that Ultimate once was, which lets them avoid the loss of sales that result from day one games on the Ultimate. This, I think, is the reason why they made Ultimate's price inaccessible for most players and kept premium at the same price. I also think, because of this strategy, they will likely retire PC GamePass within the next 2 years.

Didn't they promise 75 day one games when they price hiked the Ultimate tier?!

@MaccaMUFC @BacklogBrad People keep forgetting that we are at the tail end of the PS5 generation, and Sony is no longer subsidising the hardware. Therefore, current PS5 and PS5 Pro prices don't influence PS6 pricing directly.

themightyant put it nicely

When PS6 will be released, Sony will subsidise it by $200+, which they will recoup with PS+ and/or game sales. And even if RAM and Storage pricing don't go down when they launch it in 2028/29, they might even subsidise it as far as $300-350, and instead, significantly increase PS+ and/or game prices. I simply don't see Sony ever crossing $700 price point in the worst of circumstances.

Microsoft, on the other hand, cannot subsidise since the next gen console is going to run Steam, which by extension means no mandatory subscription will be required for online access either, i.e. no guaranteed recoup of any subsidised value. Pricing for Project Helix will, therefore, likely depend on the value of its parts and I can see them going $1200+, given the current RAM and Storage price projections.

@themightyant Woah, thanks. That is pretty helpful.

hey @themightyant, thank you for the word of support. I had one question; how do you embed or stylize what someone else had written in your replies to them?

@MinervaX76 I never once suggested Copilot will not learn from what is shared with it. However, I criticized your framing that Copilot will constantly share information your usage when it is clearly know Microsoft already collects and even lets you see your usage data (before Copilot even launches on the Xbox). Furthermore, Copilot cannot possibly send "your every single action" to the cloud simply because that transmission is network intense and can conflict with your gaming, especially if you are playing a game that requires constant connection, such as Fortnite. What Copilot will certainly send to the cloud is the snapshot of your game, either a single frame or multiple, as well as whatever you ask it when it is summoned. Beyond that I don't see Microsoft adding anything additional since whatever you said will be shared is already being shared to the cloud database.

You are focused on how the data can be stored and processed in the cloud, however, your framing completely fails if we consider how your console will need to store and transmit anything more that:
1. what it already does
2. the snapshot and question I said it will add

@fatpunkslim GDK certainly avoids having the developer maintain two different development environments for developing games for Xbox console and the PC, however, it doesn't improve anything regarding the optimization process for any set of defined hardware specs, which often is the crux of either ports that don't scale well to handhelds, laptops and desktops simultaneously or simply bad ports.

In trying to beautify what Microsoft has done, you have completely misdefined what the word build even means. Even today, before developers start using GDK, the PC builds are already compatible with handhelds, laptops, desktops and PC-based cloud solutions like GeForce Now and Amazon Luna. The only addition GDK brings is the Xbox Series X|S port, that's it. It will take developers the same amount of time to develop games, and the only time reduced will be to port the game they developed for the entire PC ecosystem to Xbox Series X|S.

Once viewed through this lens, GDK is solely Microsoft's effort to fix the lack of Xbox Series X|S ports seen in the past few years. Anything beyond that is mere speculation. We don't even know whether Project Helix will have its own unique ports, or whether it will solely rely on PC ports for new games and Series X|S ports for old ones. If it is the latter, then even Microsoft's cloud efforts will be switched to PC, reducing any speculative implications GDK can have on Project Helix.

@kmtrain83 It is likely taking a screenshot of the game only when you ask it a question, otherwise storing to transmitting all what a player is doing is both nonsensical and a technical nightmare to do.

@MinervaX76 You are completely mistaken. It (CoPilot) doesn't need to constantly look at your activity because your Xbox already records that and even shows it to you on your PC app and Cloud. And, unless you opted out of sharing usage data during setup, Microsoft is already storing that information.

I usually am against generative AI because companies use marketing jargon to make it seem like the AI knows and understands a lot, whereas, in reality, it is far from it. However, this is clearly an accessibility feature for casual gamers. It is only one step more than one asking ChatGPT a question regarding the game, that one step more being the screenshot of the game.

@Kramlar I don't believe such a model is running on devices, although I don't mind being flabbergasted if it is indeed an LLM running on device. It probably takes screenshots of whatever is on the screen and sends it to the cloud, where a model trained on thousands of YouTube walkthrough commentaries gives you the answer.

@FraserG I believe it will improve quite a lot as use cases are better defined and Microsoft has the usage data on what aspects need to be improved. It will be a great accessibility feature for casual gamers.

@Globo It is a first-gen product that would need a few iterations before Microsoft optimised for its intended use. I believe it sends the screenshot of what you are currently doing in the game along with you question to it, so it will be a lot faster at recognizing exact scenarios, when it starts working as intended.

@Balaam_ They will definitely push it on store page and even the dashboard through advertisements. However, I think it will only ever run when we use some kind of a button shortcut on the controller (and probably a background service to make that launch quicker), since it won't make sense for them to capture entire gameplay (most likely due to storage concerns).

@GeminiX53 I know they won't care, and that's why I said earlier that everyone except them are invited to read my original comment. We have one of the first confirmations for my thesis that DLSS 5 is nothing more than a real-time AI generating slop machine - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0EM1vKt36s.

They may have given up the "This is an Xbox" tagline, but PS5 will still be getting every AAA Xbox game going forward. Mark my words!

@GeeEssEff @TheGameThrifter @FiendishBeaver I have another theory here based on my experience in software development. I believe they are trying to prototype QuickResume for PC games in Project Helix console. In doing so, they are likely referencing their previous implementation on the Series consoles. Since the majority of the work was already done on said consoles and the feature had already been working for years, all they needed to do in these two weeks was expose a per-game option for the feature. I have no idea why they never did this under Phil, but this is indeed work that could be done in 2 weeks time.

P.S. They took 2 weeks for development and the testing will continue for more weeks with the Xbox insiders.

@Fiendish-Beaver I understand they have released many non-day 1 games, most of which are also available in Premium tier. However, the reason I asked such a question was to see whether that $30 price got its value over this period, even though that initial, and significant, hike suggested otherwise.

@Kezelpaso I know what day 1 release means, my question was whether they are on track for that or not. I don't see why you needed to suggest I didn't know day 1 also includes non-Microsoft games (when I never implied as such)

I wish we knew if Microsoft is on track for releasing 75 day one titles each year, ever since the Game Pass hike last October.
Further read: https://www.purexbox.com/news/2025/10/xbox-game-pass-ultimate-will-now-get-75plus-day-one-titles-per-year-a-50percent-increase-on-before

To everyone praising DLSS5 (@StylesT @Kloppo @Feffster @fatpunkslim @Neither_scene @MaccaMUFC @Globo), I won't debate that, instead I would like to have the same drogue (french word) you guys are having. To others who are interested in technical details, historical and future impact of genAI, I invite you to read further.
Creating a model that takes a huge amount of game data, processes it with generalised knowledge, and outputs a game render, all in real-time, is a genuine technical achievement, even though it currently runs on two 5090s. The way they adapted generative AI (think an input specific LLM adapted to non-text formats, e.g. MidJourney) is phenomenal. Nvidia is suggesting it is not a filter, which is true in the traditional sense, but their own press release clearly states it uses "generative AI" that "infuses pixels with photoreal lighting and materials." In other words: it is a real-time genAI filter for games. And understanding what that actually means is what leads me to say that the product they have come up with is nothing more than slop. Not with disgust of any genAI, but because of the way it is changing visuals to a horrible end, something I believe can never truly be resolved.
GenAI is called generative AI because it creates something that didn't exist before. Since the look it is trying to achieve doesn't exist in current games, it was necessarily trained on non-gaming data, requiring millions or billions of external data points to approximate something with no prior reference. The input is game data and the output is a render, but the technology at its core is the same LLM or MidJourney playbook. That matters because genAI generates every single texture, shadow, and lighting element when used. It cannot figure out whether something is a shadow over a texture or a different texture altogether, which is why it removes shadows where they existed before, adds hair where it didn't, and homogenises faces into what the internet data it was trained on finds attractive. Although developers have control over how much change is applied, there is no precise control over the art direction the genAI is coming up with, given it is a non-deterministic model. This cannot ever be resolved, simply because turning them into a deterministic model would require a thousand or million times the compute we have today.
While it is currently an optional feature, history tells us that won't last. The lazy developers or gaming executives of tomorrow will see this as an opportunity to rely solely on this technology for a game's art direction, instead of paying art directors or engineers. Optional today has a way of becoming default tomorrow, and default has a way of becoming the only option. We have already seen this pattern play out with genAI in text and video, where industries that started with optional genAI tools are now flooded by genAI creations, usually referred to as slop. There is no evidence to suggest games will be any different.
Suggested read: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/news/dlss5-breakthrough-in-visual-fidelity-for-games/

@Master_Cthulhu70 @fatpunkslim I don't read the advertisements or interviews as just the literal words but rather what they imply, which remains the same: deliver the software wherever there is demand for it. I don't see that changing. I also don't believe Nadella is losing sleep over Xbox hardware sales, especially given that they are now microscopic relative to Microsoft's total gaming revenue. The reason they are talking up Xbox as a console right now, and it is a smart move btw, is because they want to merge PC and console into a next generation living room PC category, and they need Xbox's brand reputation to launch it. That hardware will likely be delegated to OEMs down the line. I don't mind that merger, and I don't think anyone really does, but I am quite skeptical they will ship full Windows on it like the ROG Xbox Ally, simply because the temptation to trojan horse their OneDrive subscription so you can see your photos on the living room television is far too high to resist.

@Banjo @Millionski Xbox is also a business, and businesses don't necessarily need people from their domain background in leadership. TWIV did a deep dive on Asha Sharma and after reading it I am quite confident she is more than capable of leveraging the domain expertise of other specialists within Microsoft Gaming to scale the Xbox brand. I am quite certain Xbox as a business will thrive under her leadership, whether or not it does so in the way console gamers are hoping for.

@fatpunkslim > Regarding the AMD vs. Nvidia debate, I don't think players are particularly attached to one or the other. What they want is the best price to performance ratio.

AMD has generally offered better value in terms of price to performance, given that their products are comparatively cheaper. Yet Nvidia's market share has only grown over the past decade. This clearly disproves your point.
https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpus/amds-discrete-desktop-gpu-market-share-hits-all-time-low-as-nvidia-extends-its-lead

> Your comparison with the Steam Deck doesn't apply here. We're talking about a handheld console running Linux with its own limitations, and it's not even the same audience.

I think you may have misread my argument. I was discussing how the next Xbox will be significantly more powerful than the Steam Machine (not the Steam Deck), and will therefore likely cost significantly more to manufacture. The relevance of this comparison comes from Steam hardware surveys. Only 1.78% of users have 32GB of RAM, and only 2.93% have an RTX 4080 or higher. These are the specifications the next Xbox is targeting, and the people who can afford systems like that represent a very small audience. You could argue that the Xbox will be priced lower, which would broaden its target audience, but that claim does not hold up given today's rapidly rising RAM prices.

> As for Game Pass, I actually agree with you. It's a crucial factor for the future success of this console, and they really need to rethink how the subscription tiers are structured.

I think you may have misread this part as well, because I actually argued the opposite. Game Pass may have appeared pro consumer on the surface, but it was ultimately harmful to the Xbox ecosystem. Because players relied on the subscription rather than purchasing games outright, they never built up personal libraries to the same extent they otherwise would have. As a result, fewer people will feel a strong reason to carry their investment forward into the next generation of Xbox.

@Kaloudz > You must be forgetting the very public (and very quick) turnaround that Microsoft performed at the dawn of Xbox One.

And my friend, you must be forgetting they couldn't change anything regarding the hardware until the mid-gen refresh years later, which clearly proves my point that it is too late for Asha Sharma to make any changes to the console. The only thing they can change is the marketing or user experience (both of which will still need to adapt to the console whose design was fixed years ago).

P.S. How do I make phrases bold here?

@BacklogBrad The advantage is to a console player yes, but that doesn't mean they will necessarily upgrade. For example, if someone only wishes to spend $500 on a console and can only shell out $100-200 more due to rising prices, then they will never be able to even consider a $1000 Xbox.

@fatpunkslim I should start by saying I am honestly quite hopeful that this new Xbox would revolutionise PC gaming. But I believe you are viewing things from an overly optimistic lens.

The next Xbox has two potential audiences, Xbox players who have a large game libraries and will gladly pay more to be able to play their games on the next-gen device and PC players who wish to have a console-like experience.

However, I would argue both of these are actually niche audiences. For many casual gamers Xbox Series consoles were their Game Pass machines (also evident by studies which reveal most gamers purchase at most 1 game a year). The potential of them switching to PlayStation is at least the same, if not more, as them upgrading to the next Xbox. According to Steam surveys, 70% of the PC gamers have hardware specs lower than the Steam Machine, which itself is much less powerful and cheaper that what this next Xbox poses to be. This means the next Xbox will price out majority of the PC gaming market. Next, you also have to consider the fact that this next Xbox will have AMD technologies (for upscaling, anti-aliasing, path tracing, etc.) whereas majority of gamers overwhelmingly prefer Nvidia solutions, especially in the era where raw raster performance means nothing.

Again, I believe they can make a potentially incredible product here, but selling it will be even more harder than the Series consoles.

@Kaloudz > "if rumours are to be believed, it's even scared Sony off wanting to release on PC (removing the ability for folks to play Sony / Xbox / PC on a single device)."

If that were even remotely true, then Sony would delist its games from the stores just to ensure Xbox gamers cannot get their hands on the Sony IP. In reality, I believe this is simply a business case of how well their games were selling and what the lack of true exclusives meant for the future PlayStation console sales.

> "the new leadership might change course"
That is entirely unlikely. Console development takes multiple years, so whatever Xbox does this year or the next will likely have already been decided by the previous leadership and the commitments they made to different partners (e.g. AMD). The only difference they can make at this point is the marketing of the device. We will only see Asha Sharma's decisions taking effect by either the end of next year or the start of the year after.

@fatpunkslim > "Imagine games like Gears E‑Day, Blade, Clockwork Revolution, etc., released exclusively on the next Xbox"

Xbox has long given up any hopes for potential first-party exclusives (ever since they started with day one PC releases). At this point, whatever they make will definitely come to Xbox Series X|S (for many more years) and every other non-Xbox PC that has the minimum specs, even if they pull back on PlayStation/Nintendo releases.

@Questionable_Duck If it is a custom PC with Xbox games in a different hypervisor partition (which it likely is), all running within the same Windows OS, then Microsoft won't try to compromise any PC features, including every store and free online access. I agree that this will destroy any potential growth in the Xbox PC storefront sales, but maybe they are only concerned about Game Pass subscriptions from that storefront.

Digital Foundry released a video today and said Series S port is visually worse than the Switch 2 port. I am looking forward to how that could happen, given that Series S ports are usually better than their Switch 2 counterparts. But, maybe the the artistic design used by Capcom and the resulting technogies might be too much to produce great visual (alongside performace) on Series S's older SoC.

@Cikajovazmaj "you can practically ray‑trace a line from DirectX in the ’90s to the accelerated‑compute era we’re in today."
I have only ever seen AI write like that.

@Sol4ris @Banjo- @kmtrain83, if they are talking about transition now, that means Phil didn't plan to retire last year (since a transition would've already been in place by now). You don't suddenly announce a retirement like that without proper internal planning. A proper transition would've been to introduce the new face to the global audience at different Xbox events culminating with Xbox's 25th Anniversary and potential next-gen announcement, and later with a reveal that the torch has been passed on. What I believe happened is Phil had major disagreements and escalations over Nadella's business plan for gaming for many months (the recent Game Pass hikes, last year's and possibly this year's layoffs, etc.), which ended with Nadella demanding Phil retire early this week to plant his puppet leader. People keep suggesting Sarah left because of her ambition, but I think Microslop's recent history with consumer business paints a very different picture. I believe Sarah, who was clearly trained by Phil to be his true successor, was also taken aback by how Phil had to retire and chose to leave with Phil because of what Microslop's culture has become. Phil was probably told to save face for Microslop and thus had to give a statement and say scripted words. This is standard damage control, not a transition.

@kmtrain83 they always did. They just never wanted to invest years cultivating the studios and games like Sony and Nintendo do. Microsoft has always preferred shortcuts over consistent creativity, and that is why they failed in the console space.

@stefan771 I don't know where you are from, but here in the west, the majority of everyday consumers (including gamers) have seen their monthly/annual budgets dramatically increase due to recent years of inflation, without any marginal increase in income. That eats into anything people consider non-necessary for survival. This is also confirmed by multiple surveys, which concluded that most people only buy upto 1 game each year.

Despite Microsoft's efforts to bury this generation

@Fiendish-Beaver While I agree with your general thesis, but I think you missed a key point. The everyday gamer (not us enthusiasts or reward collectors) will leave a platform like cloud gaming if their experience is significantly worse than their local devices (console, PC, or mobile). Therefore, to make the cloud gaming better in quality and performance, they need to have actual users with different internet access (Broadband, Fiber, Hotspot, etc.) all across the globe as test subjects.
Of course, before Microsoft can sell it to the users for a premium, they will make investors happy with these artificial numbers. So, it is probably two things happening at the same time.

@101Force I'm of the opposite opinion. I don't think Microsoft wants to sell the next console. What I mean is that they are only concerned about creating a platform that will have Xbox library on a Windows device, so that the future Windows based third party OEM devices have some exclusivity in terms of games when compared to Linux based devices. Linux is becoming a rising alternative to Windows and having such exclusive software ensures that Microsoft maintains the flow of Windows licensing fees from third-party OEMs.

Since they were not planning to subsidize the hardware this time (making the whole thing as pricey as a same-spec'd PC), they probably didn't reserve memory and storage stock.

@Fiendish-Beaver GTA 6 is a behemoth, not just a gaming one, a cultural one. It is such a big deal that Sony and Rockstar Games consider it a platform seller pre-release. If it releases as planned on November 19 this year, no publisher (in their right mind) will release anything at least two weeks before and after its release. Some publishers will even make that a month before and after, just to make sure people have some money saved after reserving the amount for GTA 6. So, Forza Horizon 6 will never be released in the same month as GTA 6 on PlayStation, the biggest platform for a Grand Theft Auto game.

Probably a cloud first controller to go along with the free tier of Game Pass Ultimate. That combo can act as the cheapest access to gaming.

Just because they don't have ads now doesn't mean it won't get those later. Remember, enshittification runs deep at Microsoft.

KCD Royal Edition was on sale for the first 3 weeks of January (I am GP Ultimate subscriber so it could be partially because of that). This new version isn't expected to be any better than the PC version (apart from maybe the Quick Resume benefit that comes from playing it on Series consoles) but will be significantly better than the current console versions.

I haven't bought it on Xbox because Xbox is moving away from consoles and it makes more sense to then invest in Steam or GOG libraries (I own the base version of KCD on Epic but Epic is not that good of a gaming service as Steam or GOG are).

My theory is that if we get another exceptional curated experience designed for every beat and precise hours you spend in the game (think Clair Obscur Expedition 33, God of War, etc.), the best open world game will never win that year (Kingdom Come Deliverance II, Red Dead Redemption 2, etc.)

I don't think Xbox/Microsoft is doing anything to develop AMD's software technologies. It is AMD all on its own doing stuff and Xbox just integrating it (like any other game developer into their games).

Instead, FSR Redstone was built using the research PlayStation and AMD collectively did for PSSR. So, Sony is much bigger contributor to this than Xbox/Microsoft.

@PsBoxSwitchOwner Dave The Diver is not a mass market game like Skyrim, Oblivion, etc are. So your points doesn't stand.

GTA IV needs a remaster more than a port at this point.

Hear me out, corporate speech has no meaning. He also said only 4 games will go multi-platform. Nothing Phil says or said matters because the actions don't always follow the words. So we should stop reading too much into what one guy has to say when his actions are bound to his shareholders and not his beliefs.

@Questionable_Duck they spent that much developing the PC port, however, once a developer has made a PC port, the Xbox port is quite cheaper to make because all they need to change is the underlying API calls and defining what to limit based on the hardware. That is not easy and still takes time and effort, but is a lot cheaper than making a port for a completely different platform, which Xbox is not (wrt PC).

As @NishimuraX said, Game Pass has drastically changed buying habits on Xbox. Many game studios have backed up this claim, essentially saying it doesn't make sense to develop Xbox port unless they want to put it on Game Pass. Now the reason Sony has made this port is simple - they want the "whales" to buy this, and if these high spenders do, then Sony can earn large revenue from a small minority.