Xbox Indie Program Lead Advises Devs Interested in Project Helix to Start Working on Xbox for PC Versions Now

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 fict