Last summertime, we here at Ars made the argument that the business’s next Xbox console need to quit the walled garden method and simply run Windows currently. Now, recently called Microsoft Executive Vice President for Gaming Asha Sharma has actually highly hinted that this is undoubtedly the instructions Microsoft is going, stating its next-generation console will “play your Xbox and PC video games.”

In a social networks post Thursday afternoon, Sharma stated that “our dedication to the return of Xbox” would consist of a brand-new console codenamed Project Helix that “will lead in efficiency and play your Xbox and PC video games.” Sharma stated she would be talking about that dedication which console itself with designers and partners at her very first Game Developers Conference next week.

Sharma’s declaration leaves a little wiggle space for Project Helix to be something aside from a full-fledged Windows-based living-room video gaming box. The coming console’s access to PC video games might be restricted to Microsoft’s existing streaming service through PC Game Pass, for example, or to video games developed for Microsoft’s own Xbox-branded PC SDK and the PC Xbox app.

Still, a plain reading of Sharma’s declaration recommends that Microsoft is preparing to open its next console to a total Windows setup, with the capability to play 10s of countless existing PC video games. That does not come as a total shock, thinking about that Microsoft currently utilized the Xbox name for in 2015’s Windows-based ROG Xbox Ally (and its rather console-esque full-screen “Xbox Experience”). Microsoft has actually likewise been gradually minimizing the variety of video games that are completely unique to Xbox consoles, decreasing the worth of a walled-off console platform (Sony, on the other hand, drew back today from its current pattern of launching first-party titles on PC also). Valve’s coming Steam Machine is threatening to bring Windows-free PC video gaming to living spaces all over in the near future.