What is Project Helium?

In his book The XBox 360 Uncloked: The Real Story Behind Microsoft’s Next-Generation Video Game Console, Dean Takahashi lets us in on whatever knowledge he has of Microsoft’s Project Helium.

Takahashi picked up on Helium when was writing the abovementioned book. In his research, he received from an unidentified source an email containing JonT’s – referring to Jon Thomason, former head of software for the Xbox – note to the whole Xbox team.

The said email contains JonT’s description of how Helium moved from investigation to a project. But just what is Helium? Takahashi says his sources indicate it’s the version of the Xbox 360 that ran Windows. How is this possible when Microsoft executives maintained that there’s no sense in turning a game console into a full-fledged PC? Maybe the rumor that Helium has been cancelled is true. But if it isn’t what happened to it? Takahashi speculates:

“Is Helium something that we will see in the future? Will they save it for a high-end SKU later on? Will it be the 3.0 generation? Who can tell us? Who can speculate why it would make sense to come out with this kind of product?“

If indeed Helium was just postponed, does this mean we’ll be seeing a new Xbox in the near – or far – future? If it was cancelled, what product could it have referred to? Possibilities are endless. If you want to make your own guess (and wild theories), read JonT’s full e-mail.

The full email after the jump!

In his book The XBox 360 Uncloked: The Real Story Behind Microsoft’s Next-Generation Video Game Console, Dean Takahashi lets us in on whatever knowledge he has of Microsoft’s Project Helium.

Takahashi picked up on Helium when was writing the abovementioned book. In his research, he received from an unidentified source an email containing JonT’s – referring to Jon Thomason, former head of software for the Xbox – note to the whole Xbox team.

The said email contains JonT’s description of how Helium moved from investigation to a project. But just what is Helium? Takahashi says his sources indicate it’s the version of the Xbox 360 that ran Windows. How is this possible when Microsoft executives maintained that there’s no sense in turning a game console into a full-fledged PC? Maybe the rumor that Helium has been cancelled is true. But if it isn’t what happened to it? Takahashi speculates:

“Is Helium something that we will see in the future? Will they save it for a high-end SKU later on? Will it be the 3.0 generation? Who can tell us? Who can speculate why it would make sense to come out with this kind of product?“

If indeed Helium was just postponed, does this mean we’ll be seeing a new Xbox in the near – or far – future? If it was cancelled, what product could it have referred to? Possibilities are endless. If you want to make your own guess (and wild theories), read JonT’s full e-mail.

From: Jon Thomason

Sent: Wednesday, December 17, 2003 2:42 PM

To: Xbox Platform FTE

Subject: Helium kicks off

Now that Helium has received formal approval, I want to announce that weÂ’re making an organizational change.

Dwight Krossa will be reporting to me as Product Unit Manager on the Helium project. If you donÂ’t know what Helium is, youÂ’ll have to go ask Dwight J

He will be staffing a team to attack the substantial challenges around this and will also work closely with Chris PirichÂ’s and Greg GibsonÂ’s teams, who also have pieces of Helium to deliver.

IÂ’m including here a note from Dwight about himselfÂ…not because heÂ’s new to our organization, but in kicking off this new role he will interact with a lot of people who might not already know him:

My Life Before Helium: I have a BSCS from UC Irvine (focus on AI), and spend my first years out of college developing voice recognition products. My career at Microsoft started a long, long time ago, as the Build Manager for OS/2 (I have lots of experience working with IBM). I then did tools development, writing the OS/2 GUI equivalent to RAID and other internal tools. From there I moved to marketing, helping to launch SQL Server and Lan Manager, then worked on Lan Manager for Unix (yes, Microsoft has actually sold UNIX products before), and was managing a product marketing team when we launched the first version of Windows NT Server.

I worked in Windows NT Server, Backoffice, and IIS, helping to launch and market all of these products as we battled OS/2, Novell, and Netscape. Have you noticed a trend? None of the products I worked on in my first 8 years at Microsoft made any money and had market dominant competitors. We eventually blew by all of these competitors. I feel right at home here in Xbox.

I then left marketing, going into Program Management for IIS. From there I did business development for a couple of years, then moved to Developer division product planning and then Windows server marketing, managing teams doing product planning and product marketing focusing on ISPs, Telcos and the application server platform. Last year I joined Xbox under Cameron as the Director of Random Projects, working on the Far East launch of Xbox and various investigations of new opportunities for the Xbox platform. And after a year one of those investigations is taking the next step, moving from investigation to development; Project Helium. If you donÂ’t know what Project Helium is, stop by my office, breath the Helium, and I will explain it all.

Outside of work, my wife Nancy and I have two children Cody (9) and Ellie (6), who are very happy that I am in Xbox, because Xbox is a lot more fun to play with then a copy of Backoffice.

Please join me in welcoming Dwight to this new role!

-JonT