Project Helix Might Support the Full History of Xbox Games - DTNS 5324

**Jason Howell** (0:04)
This is the Daily Tech News for Tuesday, August 4th, 2026 We tell you what you need to know, give you the important context in all of it, and help each other understand.

**Tom Merritt** (0:13)
Oh my gosh, August.
Today, Dr. Niki tells us about 3D printing ear bones. Want to 3D print some ear bones? Dr. Niki is going to tell you how to do it. And Microsoft's Project Helix console could run the entire back catalog of Xbox console games, including 360

**Jason Howell** (0:32)
Whoa, that's crazy. I'm Jason Howell.

**Tom Merritt** (0:35)
I'm Tom Merritt.

**Jason Howell** (0:36)
Let's start with what you need to know with a big story.
Really big story if you're interested in game preservation, which I definitely am. A leaked memo addressed to publishers, obtained by The Verge's Tom Warren, reveals or shows that Microsoft is pitching Project Helix, which is the next Xbox console, as a hybrid Xbox and PC console capable of running games designed, yes, for the new hardware, but also running games from four Xbox generations, plus PC games on top of that, of course.
Microsoft's disk-to-digital system would turn Xbox One and Xbox Series X and S disks into digital licenses. Those licenses could transfer across supported Xbox devices, including Helix, including PCs and Xbox handhelds, wherever a game is enabled as Xbox play anywhere. Now, on the publisher side, publishers can opt into eligible or their titles, their Xbox titles that are actually eligible for this into the new backwards compatibility on PC and Helix program. That would give them control over pricing, over licensing, whether the game hits game paths or not. And then Microsoft would actually make the games work on Project Helix, on Windows PCs, on its Xbox branded handhelds, by owning the engineering side, the certification, and then support for all that backwards compatibility basically. So the expanded Xbox play anywhere program. This is the one that allows games to be played on any supported device. It already covers more than 1500 titles, right? Microsoft's expected to extend that model to new Helix and PC backwards compatibility releases over the next few years. That would build on a separate PC backward compatibility program for original Xbox games that Microsoft actually announced last month with plans to launch that in October. So little confusing, but I think at the end of the day, Project Helix, capable of running pretty much the back catalog of Xbox titles, and I think that's pretty significant.

**Tom Merritt** (2:52)
Yeah, there's a lot of steps along the way that we're talking about here, like you were mentioning. The first step is the one you mentioned last.
We're going to get four Xbox games that you can run on PC, but that's apparently just the tip of the iceberg. In fact, the emulator that's going to do that has the emulator to run the 360 games, which is part of the news that we're talking about here, is like, well, they've got the emulator to run the 360, and we have Tom Warren saying that they're out there talking about this pitch to port your games to PC. I think what they're aiming at is eventually, if you have an Xbox game, you can run it on a Microsoft device, whether it's Windows-based and made by somebody else. Maybe it's a handheld Windows-based device. Maybe it's a PC or Project Helix, which will be called Xbox Ridiculous Name, because the names keep getting more ridiculous with every generation of Xbox. But yeah, you'll be able to buy an Xbox if that's what you want, or just play things on the PC, and it'll be a long road there, but eventually it won't matter when you bought it and what device you have. The aim is to make everything playable across all of its own platforms.

**Jason Howell** (4:17)
Now, this still requires though publishers of these games, whether those publishers still exist or not, to basically say, yes, we want to do this, and then those machinations are happening. This isn't just like automatically Microsoft flips the switch and every single game in the history of Xbox catalog suddenly appears. And there still needs to be some sort of coordination there to actually, I guess, opt into the system.

**Tom Merritt** (4:45)
Yeah, for the developers. For the first party titles, I assume Microsoft is going to be like, great, we'll make this happen. But for the third party developers, yeah. That's why I was trying to choose my words carefully of like, it will be a long road to get there. And the aim is to be able to play everything. We'll never get to be able to play everything, like you said.