Xbox CEO Asha Sharma has marked 25 years of Xbox with a memo to staff, and in it she writes: “We’ve built four generations of XBOX consoles, with a fifth on the way.” That is not a first confirmation that a next console exists. Xbox already confirmed the next Xbox as Project Helix in March 2026. Sharma does not name Helix, give a date or give any specs in this memo. The message was sent to Team Xbox employees globally and published in full on Xbox Wire today, Thursday 12 November. Sharma also shared it on X at 3:15pm UK time.
25 YEARS OF XBOX
— ASHA (@asha_shar) November 12, 2026
The memo at a glance
- Next console: “a fifth on the way”, with no name, date or details. Xbox already confirmed Project Helix in March 2026
- Reach: Xbox games reach “more than a billion players every year”
- Long-serving staff: 111 people with 25 years or more at Xbox and its studios each get a special engraved console
- Celebration: the anniversary comes “home to Seattle” today
- The Next 25: Sharma says the cost, resources and risk of making games have grown, and “We must change this”
From Microsoft Adventure to Halo
Sharma starts well before the console. In 1979, Microsoft released Microsoft Adventure, a text-based game adapted by a single programmer, Gordon Letwin, one of Microsoft’s first 13 employees. A few years later, Bruce Artwick brought flight to the desk with the first Microsoft Flight Simulator, and over the following decade Microsoft published titles including Minesweeper and Age of Empires.
In the mid-1990s, she writes, a small team working on DirectX had a big idea, and work soon began on the secret “Project Midway”. The original Xbox launched in 2001 with a giant X moulded into a black case, a “bright alien green jewel” in the middle, a built-in hard drive, and an Ethernet port at a time when, according to the memo, 9 in 10 households were still on dial-up.
Xbox Live followed a year later with persistent friend lists and matchmaking. Holding it all together was Halo: Combat Evolved, the launch game Sharma credits with backing up the first Xbox advertising campaign: “Games Will Never Be The Same.” If you want the full journey, our 25 Years of Xbox timeline covers it.
“A fifth on the way”
The line comes in a single sentence about where Xbox is now: “We’ve built four generations of XBOX consoles, with a fifth on the way.” That is all this memo says about the hardware. There is no name, no release window and no technical detail, and Sharma does not use the words Project Helix.
A next Xbox is not new. Xbox officially confirmed Project Helix as its next-generation first-party console in Jason Ronald’s Xbox Wire post on 11 March 2026, and Sharma has previously talked about a family of devices for Helix. Our Project Helix hub and our living post on everything we know about Project Helix have the official picture so far.
What is new here is the setting: the CEO putting “a fifth on the way” in a staff anniversary memo, then closing with a job description that includes “unmistakable hardware” and a section on The Next 25.
Sharma adds that Xbox games now reach more than a billion players every year, naming Call of Duty, Candy Crush, Diablo, Doom, Fable, Fallout, Forza, Gears of War, Halo, Minecraft, Overwatch, Sea of Thieves, The Elder Scrolls, StarCraft, Warcraft and Wolfenstein “and many more”.
Engraved consoles for 111 veterans
Under the heading “To Everyone Who Made XBOX, XBOX”, Sharma thanks staff, studios, developers and partners. She singles out the 111 people across Xbox and its studios who have been there for 25 years or more. Each will receive “a special engraved console” to mark what they helped build.
She also writes about stories she has heard since joining Xbox, from friendships and marriages that started over a session to parents sharing the games they grew up with. “Ultimately, this is why we exist,” she says. After celebrating with fans around the world and special launches, she adds: “Today, we are bringing the celebration home to Seattle.” Our Xbox FanFest Seattle guide has what was confirmed for the event.
The Next 25
The final section looks forward, and it is where the memo turns from birthday card to mission statement. Sharma compares the first Microsoft Flight Simulator, which was 160 KB, with 16 colours and 20 airports, to Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, which she says draws on more than 2.5 petabytes of data.
Her point is that the cost, resources and risk of making games “have grown just as dramatically”. As a result, she writes, “too many ideas never become games, and too many games fall short of what their creators imagined.” Then, in four words: “We must change this.”
She goes on to say that the scale of what people could create has always been set by “the people, capital, and resources we could command”, and that “That relationship is beginning to break.” According to Sharma:
- “A single person will soon be able to wield capabilities that once required entire nations.”
- A small team will be able to build worlds that today demand hundreds of developers and hundreds of millions of dollars.
- Xbox’s largest studios will be able to go as far beyond today’s games as Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 is from the series’ first entry in 1982.
She does not say how. The memo does not name a technology, a tool or a product behind that shift.
Sharma says she believes the future of gaming “will look more like its beginning, when a small team with a big idea could change how the world plays.” Her closing line sets out Xbox’s job as she sees it: “to deliver great games, unmistakable hardware, and give more people the chance to make something the world has never seen.” And then, in capitals: “Happy Birthday XBOX!”
