A New Xbox Memo Points to a Tough Reset and a Possible 2027 Launch for Helix

A lot of news has come out about XBOX today, namely a new memo from CEO Asha Sharma outlining the “Next 100 Days: XBOX Reset” and suggesting that Helix could be coming in 2027.

Just days after XBOX CEO Asha Sharma gave an interview about the perils of the RAM crisis and how it will affect upcoming Project Helix pricing, more information has come out of XBOX today, with a publicly published memo from the CEO to the entire Team XBOX around the globe. The memo is titled “Next 100 Days: XBOX Reset,” and it outlines some of the issues the team has been facing over at the company. This is amid forecasted mass layoffs (although attendees were notably promised limited new consoles at the XBOX Games Showcase), and reports that XBOX botched their exclusives reveal at SGF 2026 and potentially harmed its relationship with PlayStation.

First off, the Xbox Reset memo doubles down on the RAM shortage crisis. The memo (signed by Asha Sharma and Matt Booty) says, “We are in a hardware component crisis. When I joined as CEO in February, the price we paid for console storage components was over 2x as high as we paid last fall. These costs have since doubled again. And as we plan for the 2027 holiday season, we expect another significant increase, taking us over 5x the prices we paid only two years earlier.”

While the hardware crisis comments are repeats of the Fortune Interview on Wednesday, the mention of Holiday 2027 is new and suggests Microsoft could be planning something in that window, like Project Helix’s launch. The memo also placed huge importance on the company’s bottom line. The XBOX Reset alleged how much the company has been losing for the past half-decade, and the number is staggering. The memo reads, “We will end this fiscal year at about a 3% accountability margin, down year-over-year,” adding that over the past five years “annual revenue has declined nearly half a billion during that time. Going forward, this cannot continue.”

One of the striking lines in the memo implies that changes are on the horizon: “We need to reassess the balance between these and our investment priorities for the next 5 years,” which sounds like layoff forecasting. According to Bloomberg (and unnamed sources), layoffs are expected shortly after Microsoft’s fiscal year closes on June 30.

Bloomberg‘s Jason Schreier has also reported that the ongoing XBOX Reset could have potentially damaged the working relationship between PlayStation and XBOX. Many fans have pointed out (first noted by Giant Bomb’s Jeff Grubb) that a PS5 logo appears in a version of the SGF 2026 Gears of War: E-Day trailer, suggesting the decision to make the title an XBOX console exclusive was made very close to the show’s airtime. This notion was rejected by the Xbox Vice President of Games Marketing, Aaron Greenberg, as he said he was made aware of the situation “a month in advance”.

However, pulling the trailer and subsequently making a title exclusive to the XBOX console platform could still have consequences if done at the last minute, such as a damaged working relationship with PlayStation moving forward. With the XBOX Reset officially in motion, change is on the horizon at XBOX, but it’s still up in the air on whether the changes will be good or bad in the long run.