Stellar Blade CTO asks Microsoft for early Xbox Project Helix dev kits

Shift Up, the South Korean studio behind Stellar Blade, has asked Microsoft to get its next-generation Xbox development hardware into Korea as early as possible. Chief Technology Officer DongKi Lee made the request on November 9 at the 2026 Console Game Developers Conference (K-Console Conference), held at the SKY31 Convention in Seoul’s Lotte World Tower.

A request made with Xbox in the room

Lee’s comment came during the event’s closing panel. It was moderated by former Sony Interactive Entertainment executive Shuhei Yoshida and featured Katsuhiro Harada, Kazutaka Kodaka, Paweł Sasko, and Tynan Sylvester. Moments earlier, Harada had joked that with a senior Xbox official in the audience, he worried Microsoft would follow the Xbox Series S with a cut-down “Helix S.”

Lee then turned the discussion to Microsoft’s next console. “Personally, I am looking forward to the next-gen Xbox ‘Helix’. From an engineer’s standpoint, if you provide us with a dev kit first in Korea as early as possible, we will put in our best efforts to develop for it,” he said, according to Inven’s translation.

Lee framed this as personal enthusiasm rather than a platform announcement. Shift Up has not confirmed any game for Project Helix or for current Xbox hardware.

Project Helix Alpha hardware arrives in 2027

The request lines up with Microsoft’s own roadmap. Xbox Vice President of Next Generation Jason Ronald gave the Xbox Developer Summit keynote at GDC 2026 on March 11. He said the team is deep in development on Project Helix and plans to ship alpha versions of the hardware to developers beginning in 2027. The console uses a custom AMD SoC and is designed to play both Xbox console and PC games.

Stellar Blade has already moved beyond PS5

Stellar Blade launched as a PlayStation 5 exclusive on April 26, 2024, but has since reached more platforms. The PC version followed on June 11, 2025, and Stellar Blade Complete Edition arrived on Nintendo Switch 2 on November 5, 2026. Lee told the panel that Shift Up was planned for multiplatform from the start and builds in a PC environment first.

The studio is also self-publishing its sequel, Stellar Blade: Blood Rain, which was revealed at Summer Game Fest in June 2026. Shift Up has not announced platforms or a release date, and the game remains in early development. A Helix version is unconfirmed, but self-publishing leaves the platform decision entirely in Shift Up’s hands.

Shift Up has also delayed Project Spirits' reveal, as Q3 profits had dwindled.