"Fans should brace for an expensive machine": Xbox Project Helix might arrive in 2028, analyst suggests – and it "could be priced at $900" at minimum

New Xbox CEO Asha Sharma gave us the tiniest sliver of a tease with her Twitter reveal of next-generation console Project Helix on March 5, but Kantan Games founder and industry consultant Dr. Serkan Toto can at least make a few good guesses about what we should expect. Namely, he tells GamesRadar+ to prepare for another fat price tag by the time Project Helix launches in the, presumably, near future.

"It sounds like the memory price increase could (hopefully) be history by the time Project Helix goes into mass production," Toto says in reference to the global RAM shortages both delaying hardware production and driving up prices. "But fans should brace for an expensive machine in any case."

Toto observes, "The PS5 Pro is $750 in the US, while the Xbox Series X with 2TB is even $800. There is absolutely no reason to expect Project Helix to be cheaper, so a base model could be priced at $900 and a more premium version at even more than that." That certainly seems in line with Xbox's recent pricing history – over the course of 2025 alone, the company bumped the price for its premium Xbox Series X 2TB console from $599.99 to $799.99. Ouch.

Xbox seems to need the money. "After Sony annihilated Microsoft with the PS4, they did it again with the PS5 – so the pressure to come up with a new approach is clearly on Xbox," Toto tells us. "This generation is totally lost for Microsoft, so I believe a 2028 release date is realistic."

Whether or not 2028 will truly help mark Microsoft's "commitment to the return of Xbox," as Sharma said about Project Helix in her tease, however – that's something unpredictable.

Project Helix "might be Microsoft's last attempt to make their hardware business work," analyst suggests: "There is nobody in this industry who believes there will be another Xbox if this next machine fails."