Xbox Portfolio GM Says Devs Looking to Release on Next-Gen Xbox ‘Should Be Developing for Xbox Console and PC Today’

Chris Charla, the general manager of portfolio and programs at Xbox, has been with Xbox for 16 years, and worked on ID@Xbox for 13. He began in 2010 as the XBLA portfolio director, and has changed titles several times to things like director of ID@Xbox and senior director of content curation and programs. But all of these fancy titles have roughly described the same job he says he’s been doing the whole time: “making sure cool indie games get onto Xbox and into players’ hands.”

Charla and I have met many times, usually at Xbox-hosted mixers or ID@Xbox events at the Game Developers Conference (GDC), Summer Game Fest, or elsewhere. Almost universally, every time we chat casually, we share photos of our cats and talk about what books we’re reading.

But this year, I was able to formally interview him about his job, the indie landscape, and what’s on the horizon for Xbox and its third party relationships. We headed up to a quiet loft in downtown San Francisco above Xbox’s Play Anywhere event at GDC 2026. On our way up, I (maybe too proudly) told him I had been reading War and Peace. He, skateboard in hand, told me he rode it here, and had been reading a miscellaneous mix of science fiction.

Just a floor below us were 13 upcoming indie games coming to Xbox being shown off to media throughout the day. I had just gotten done playing the likes of 3D puzzler Nomori, brain-breaking platformer Screenbound, and (my favorite of their showcase) narrative-driven life simulator Delphinium. Xbox does this sort of thing every year, and frankly, their indie showcases like this are always full of bangers. Whatever peaks and valleys have gone on with Xbox’s first-party line-up in the last few generations, Charla knows how to pick an indie.

So I started by asking him what it is he’s actually looking for in partners – not just for ID@Xbox, but in general. Who does Charla want to see on Xbox?

“When it’s about platform access and making sure that we’re helping developers get onto Xbox and get onto Xbox for PC and console, it’s about just helping developers realize their dreams and get more access,” he says. “When we get more specific in terms of what we’re looking to showcase at a show or in our Indie Selects program or maybe work with Game Pass, it’s more about really looking to just showcase the diversity of stories and games that are out there. I think you’ve been downstairs–the diversity of games downstairs, like in 13 games, we have eight countries represented. We have everything from solo pixel art or 3D pixel art efforts to very pro 3D fighting games. So to me, that diversity is actually the hallmark of the program and making sure there’s something for everyone to check out and enjoy.”

While Charla says his actual job hasn’t changed much in 16 years, the development landscape he’s working with certainly has. When he first started, he says, every developer was just asking him, “How can I get a dev kit?” Just getting on the platform at all was the biggest hurdle for most, and the thing most people wanted help and support with. Now, while he’s still fielding those questions, he’s more commonly being asked about market conditions, what players are and aren’t buying. He and his team provide that advice, as well as PR assistance and amplification of the dev’s promotional efforts. They also advise and support with discovery–something he says has always been a huge challenge but has shifted in the same way other problems have shifted over the years. Once, he said, just getting on the Xbox store at all was much harder, but if you could do it, discovery of your game was effectively solved.

Now…well, there’s a lot of games, and a lot of work to be done to help players find a specific one. For instance, Charla says, he’s recently been told by many devs that Xbox’s New Releases page is critical for discovery. So he’s been working on improving that page, as well as planning out other, upcoming backend tools for developers to help get eyes on their games.

“[The New Releases] channel was kind of getting crowded with some stuff that was not as new as it could have been, but it was taking up three or four slots in a row–pushing games below the fold,” he says. “And so we looked into it, we made some determinations with our developer code of conduct and some policy changes. And now the channel is much, much cleaner and we’re continuing to look at ways we can make sure that new games get the highlight that they need because that is so crucial, both for players who want to know what’s out there and what’s new and what’s cool, and for developers who want to make sure their game is getting seen by players.”

He also adds that as Xbox increases its visibility through Xbox on PC, through cloud streaming and smart TV integration and other initiatives, there will be even more opportunities to get games in front of different groups of people. Which leads us to another conversation: Phil Spencer is retiring. Charla has a new boss. How much is his job going to change under new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma?

According to Charla, it won’t. Not much. “Her goals are all about ensuring there’s great games from both our first-party studios and our third-party studios, returning to Xbox, real focus on the things that make Xbox great, the platform features, whether it’s achievements and gamer score, your friends list, anything like that, and then really focusing on the future of fun and the future of play. And you look at that and you’re like, ‘Well, I think ID@Xbox ladders up to all three of those pretty well.'”

I ask about those goals Sharma’s been promoting, which Charla just reiterated. And specifically one: “return to Xbox.” What does that actually mean? Were they far away from Xbox before?

“I don’t think so,” he says. “I think for us, Xbox has always been at the core of everything that we do. It’s the name of our business. But I think that just making sure that folks understand our commitment to Xbox and our commitment to console, the center of everything we do. There’s lots and lots of great places to play Xbox games that aren’t just a console, but I think just understanding that people know that’s our reference, that smooth, friction-free experience that you have on the couch with a controller, that’s where it starts. And then having that same experience wherever you go, wherever you want to play is also crucial, but it’s really just about letting people know we love console and we love being on TVs.”

I spoke to Charla on Tuesday of GDC. On Wednesday, Xbox held a keynote at the event revealing various features of its upcoming next-gen Xbox project, known as Project Helix, specifically targeted at developers. Among the news there was the announcement that alpha versions of the hardware would be made available to developers in 2027. In a follow-up email, I hit Charla with some bonus questions about Project Helix specifically in light of what was discussed at that talk. Though Charla’s not in charge of hardware, he is working very closely with a lot of people who are using it. Is Project Helix going to be more challenging to work with for developers, specifically those who have never made games for Xbox before? Or easier?

Easier, he says, certainly. “We’re working hard so developers can make one Xbox build in the future and it’ll run on their Project Helix console, on PC and on streaming and cloud surfaces like smart TVs and other devices.”

Charla says that the support he expects to be able to offer to developers wanting to come on board Project Helix will be roughly the same as what is offered now: assistance implementing Xbox APIs, working with backend systems, business processes like promoting the game, sharing marketing data, and the like. So I ask him what advice he has for developers, especially indies, who are looking at releasing on Project Helix in future years.

“Someone looking to be ready for next-gen with Xbox should be developing for Xbox console today, developing for Xbox on PC, and supporting Xbox Play Anywhere,” he says. “That’ll put you in pole position for the next generation and ensure your Xbox on PC game runs natively on Project Helix. The exact specifics may differ per developer and game. In a lot of cases if you’re coming from a Steam or stock PC build it may be smarter to start with the Xbox for PC version first and then use that as the basis for the Xbox console version. Of course we’ll have more details about how developers can take advantage of the specific hardware features of Project Helix in the months ahead, but doing this ensures they’ll have a native build on Project Helix.”

That was the end of my email chat with Charla after the fact, but our Tuesday discussion still had a bit more ground to cover. We’re still talking about ID@Xbox under Charla under Sharma, he tells me, had just done a roundtable with developer partners at GDC, and even tried some games. Charla says she apparently really enjoyed I Am Your Beast, from Strange Scaffold, and isn’t especially concerned that she hasn’t come from a gaming background – she’s willing to learn, and that’s what matters.

“I think [Sharma’s] leadership is going to be really good,” he says. “And I really think that when she came in and just set those three principles, and that was like day one, minute one, I mean, really minute one of her first town hall with everybody, she really laid that out. You could feel it in the room that people were like, ‘Yeah, this feels right.’ You know what I mean? Is there education that she’s doing? Of course. She’s new in a role. Of course she’s going to learn, she’s going to have more input and everything like that, but like for her to… She’s been working with Phil on this transition for a while and for her to come and that first day just be like boom, boom, boom. I can only say how I reacted, which I was like, ‘Wow, that’s really cool.’ And I feel like the team and everybody I know at Team Xbox feels the same way.”

Charla concludes our conversation with optimism about the future of Xbox and the work he does with third-parties and indies in particular. I ask him what he thinks his thus-far-mostly-unchanging job will look like in 13 more years. He cheerfully replies that it will probably, hopefully, be roughly the same.

“We’re in the best time ever to be playing games,” he says. “The only disadvantage I can say to 2026 versus 2006 or 1999 or something is in 1999 maybe you could know every single game that shipped and you could keep the whole industry in your head. That was the thing you could do. You can’t do that anymore. There’s just too many games. At the same time, the variety, the depth, the artistic and creative and intellectual and technological progression of the medium has gone so much farther than I ever expected. And clearly, every step we take forward, you suddenly realize, ‘Oh my God, there’s like another three miles we can go.’ And so all that you can see from all these huge strides that we’re making as an industry is how much further we can take this medium. And it’s just so exciting. It just makes me stoked.

“And then you pause and you go back and you play Limbo, which is now almost 20 years old and you’re like, ‘Yeah, this just holds up perfectly.’ You play Castle Crashers, ‘This just holds up perfectly.’ I mean, you mentioned you’re reading War and Peace, that still holds up. People are going to be playing Castle Crashers in a hundred years and it’s still going to be just as good.”

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.