Xbox boss Matt Booty has confirmed Microsoft’s next console won’t appear during this week’s Xbox Games Showcase, as a dispute kicks off over PS5 logos.
While we have some idea of what to expect heading into this Sunday’s Xbox Games Showcase – between Gears Of War: E-Day, Halo: Campaign Evolved, and the recently delayed Fable – there was a possibility that Microsoft would choose to show its next console as well.
Xbox’s next console, codenamed Project Helix, doesn’t have a release date yet, but we have more confirmed details about it than Sony’s PlayStation 6, which suggests it’ll be out first. Microsoft has confirmed it will run PC games and that dev kits will be sent out in early 2027.
However, if you were hoping to hear more about Project Helix during the showcase, Xbox’s chief content officer Matt Booty has swooped in to temper your expectations.
Speaking on the Official Xbox Podcast about the showcase, Booty said: ‘We really want to focus on the teams and on the games, and this is not going to be a place where we’re going to talk strategy, broadly.
‘There are certainly some strategic things that are out there and things we want to bring clarity to, but the focus here is on the games. For the long term, we want to make the right decisions, not fast decisions.
Expert, exclusive gaming analysis
Sign up to the GameCentral newsletter for a unique take on the week in gaming, alongside the latest reviews and more. Delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning.
‘I can also say that there won’t be Helix news, so Helix will not be in this showcase. Again, we want to get everything about that right.’
The absence of Project Helix isn’t too surprising, considering the uncertainty around when it will actually be released. Both Sony and Microsoft’s next consoles were expected to launch in 2027, but with the global memory shortage, there’s a strong possibility they could be delayed into 2028 or beyond.
Microsoft revealed its current console, the Xbox Series X/S, at The Game Awards in 2019 (although, that didn’t exactly pan out well for them), so it’s possible they could do the same for Project Helix this year. Alternatively, we may have to wait until 2027 for a reveal.
Elsewhere on the podcast, Booty reiterated how, with Xbox’s multiplatform push, it will continue to clearly signpost in its presentations when revealed games are coming to PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch 2.
‘We’ll be very clear about which platforms a game is coming to and want to continue the precedent,’ Booty added. ‘I think we’ve got a good system going where make it clear in showcase.’
However, Booty’s comments sparked some online backlash for choosing not to focus on Xbox solely during their presentations. As X user Klobrille argued: ‘I feel like the bare minimum expectation many had was for Xbox to really focus on their own platform at least for the time of the Showcase.’
This pretty niche complaint was, surprisingly, given a response by Xbox CEO Asha Sharma, who has now seemingly performed a U-turn based on the feedback.
In response to the aforementioned tweet, Sharma wrote: ‘Seeing the feedback on logos. It was a miss, and I own it. We are talking about how we adjust for future XBOX shows.’
Some might interpret Sharma’s responsive approach to fan feedback as a positive, but it’s concerning if the company’s strategy can be flipped under the weight of a few tweets from disgruntled fans.
This is the same CEO who suggested exclusive games could make a comeback on Xbox, in a similarly reactive fashion, and even determined the name ‘Xbox’ should be capped up to ‘XBOX’ after conducting a poll on X. In the first case she must know it’s impossible to sustain an exclusive on the Xbox alone and, in the second case, she surely realises that nobody except Microsoft is ever going to write it that way.
At this stage, it’s hard to tell if these impromptu executive decisions will have any meaningful impact on Xbox’s strategy moving forward or if it’s simply performative gesturing to appease fans on trivial matters. But at a time when Xbox needs a clearer direction more than ever, this flip-flopping to fan whims isn’t exactly a reassuring sign that they do have a solid plan for the future.
For now, we’ll have to wait and see what the company does have up its sleeve – with or without PlayStation 5 logos – at the Xbox Games Showcase on Sunday, June 7, at 6pm UK time.
Email gamecentral@metro.co.uk, leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter.
To submit Inbox letters and Reader’s Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here.
For more stories like this, check our Gaming page.