XBOX at Unreal Fest 2026

XBOX is coming to Unreal Fest in Chicago (June 16 – June 19) to meet game developers who love what we love: making games and delighting the people who play them. 

We will have experts from XBOX Developer Relations, ID@XBOX, developer tools, platform engineering, and publishing programs available to help developers understand what support is available and where to go next.  Members of The Coalition (Gears of War) and Halo Studios (Halo: Campaign Evolved) will also be giving talks and answering questions.

We would like to hear what you are working on and how we can make the XBOX developer experience clearer and easier to use.

We will be answering questions about the Microsoft GDK Plug-ins for Unreal Engine, key advances in platform tech like GameInput and Windows Device Lighting, and the work we are doing with Epic Games to make it easier for developers to bring their Windows games into the XBOX ecosystem.

Please stop by, ask an expert, and get connected to the answers you need from the XBOX Game Dev community.

So, where can you find XBOX at the show?

TUESDAY, JUNE 16

In the Booth | 6:00pm - 8:00pm CT (Tuesday) 10:00am - 6:00pm CT (Wednesday + Thursday)

Hosts: Nick Landry (Principal Product Manager, XBOX Developer Relations, Annette Porter (Senior Business Development Manager, ID@XBOX Developer Acceleration Program), Zach Hooper (Principal Product Manager, Xbox Developer Tools), Lucas Salavador (Principal Software Engineering Manager, XBOX Platform Engineering), Eddie Iglesias (Principal Product Manager, Team XBOX), Clint Woon (Principal Product Manager, XBOX Developer Relations)

Come ask us *anything*!  We will have specialists to go deep about publishing with ID@XBOX, building Win32 games with the Microsoft Game Development Kit and the Unreal Engine plug-ins, but we also have our developer education and developer outreach team who can matchmake you with answers, content, and subject matter experts for anything and everything XBOX through our XBOX Game Dev community.

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 17

Lunch and Learn 1 of 2 | 12:35pm CT

Talk about your XBOX Game Developer Experience

Host: Clint Woon (Principal Product Manager, XBOX Developer Relations)

Ask us anything!  Meet members of the teams responsible for building the XBOX developer tools, documentation, platform features, publishing programs, and advocating for developers inside of XBOX.  We meet with developers around the globe at events like GDC, Xfest, and more, but this is our chance to hear specifically what Unreal Engine developers need the most.  We will share what we have learned too! Gain insights we’ve picked up over decades of working with partners and real talk from what our own XBOX Game Studios – nearly 30 of them – had to say about building XBOX games with the Unreal Engine and the GDK.

We are growing the XBOX community.

We have hundreds of thousands of developers actively participating in our XBOX programs at every level of skill and experience.  By collaborating with Epic, we are opening the doors to more developers to build XBOX games easier and faster with the latest tech.

Bring your curiosity and leave with a clear understanding of how XBOX works with and supports game developers anywhere people want to make games, for this generation and the next.

Power Talk | Wednesday, June 17 @ 12:45pm CT:

Press Start: Get Your PC Game on Xbox in Under an Hour

Presenter: Eddie Iglesias (Principal Product Manager, Team XBOX)

Unreal Engine already handles most of what it takes to put your game on XBOX - including rendering, input, and much of the platform plumbing. What it doesn't handle is the bookends: getting onboarded as an Xbox developer and getting your packaged build published through the XBOX store. 

In this session, Microsoft’s Eddie Iglesias will cover the parts of the journey that are still yours at a high level: modular onboarding that gets you building in about thirty minutes (no NDA on the docs); Partner Center setup with isolated sandboxes running live XBOX services; wiring your Unreal Engine project to your XBOX identity (SCID, Store ID, sandbox); and packaging and publishing through the XBOX app using the same install experience your players will see.

THURSDAY, JUNE 18

Stage Talk | 10:45pm CT

Evolving a Legend: Bringing Halo to Unreal Engine 5

Presenters: Casey Wu (Principal Producer, HALO | XBOX Game Studios), Greg Herman (General Manager, HALO | XBOX Game Studios)

How do you move one of the most iconic 25‑year‑old game franchises from its proprietary tech stack onto a modern engine without breaking its soul? In this session, Halo Studios will take you behind the scenes of Halo’s multi‑year transition to Unreal Engine 5—a journey filled with breakthroughs, pitfalls, paradigm shifts, and a whole lot of learning.

The team will explore how this shift reshaped every discipline across the studio, from production rhythms to engineering mindsets to art workflows. You’ll hear how they re‑thought development methodology, rebuilt pipelines, retrained teams, and re‑examined assumptions that had been embedded in the franchise for decades.

Along the way, they’ll share the good, the bad, and the genuinely exciting moments when new tech unlocked ideas that were never possible before. Whether you're leading a franchise reboot, modernizing a legacy codebase, or just curious, this talk will offer practical lessons, surprising discoveries, and a candid look at what it really takes to reinvent a AAA pipeline while building ‘Halo’ for the future.

Lunch and Learn 2 of 2 | 12:35pm CT

Talk about your XBOX Game Developer Experience

Hosts: Clint Woon (Principal Product Manager, XBOX Developer Relations)

If you missed the first session, it’s not too late!  If you already joined the first session, we can keep the conversation going and bring the new folks along the journey too. 

Stage Talk | 2:00pm CT

Learnings from an Unreal Shared Technology Group at Xbox

Presenters: Phil Cousins (Engine Technical Director, The Coalition | XBOX Game Studios), Grace Yen (Principal Technical Program Manager, XBOX Games Technology Group | XBOX Game Studios)

Come learn about how The Coalition - home of the ‘Gears of War’ franchise - established the XBOX Games Technology Group (XGTG), an Unreal Engine-focused shared technology group within XBOX. XGTG exists to help advance game development across XBOX by sharing technology, improving performance and memory on titles, sharing guidance and best practices, and promoting collaborations—all to enable studios to build higher‑quality games more efficiently. 

Join Phil Cousins, Technical Director for XGTG, as he walks through how the team was established and shares the impact it’s having today.  He’ll explain how they share technology, including examples of key systems, features, and workflows other teams have adopted. He will also discuss how they handle performance engagements with titles and how they share their learnings across all studios. Finally, he’ll explore how they build communities and cross-team collaborations around shared technologies to increase the impact of what they do. 

Attendees will leave with a guide for establishing shared technology groups, proven strategies for cross-team collaborations, and knowledge sharing, as well as actionable tips for accelerating technology sharing and adoption in their own studios.

Stage Talk | Thursday, June 18 @ 3:00pm CT: 

Building XBOX Games with Unreal Engine’s New GDK Plug-ins - from Windows 11 to XBOX

Presenters: Zach Hooper (Principal Product Manager, Team XBOX), David Harvey (Senior Engine Programmer, Epic Games)

Players expect their games to follow them from the devices they have today, from Windows 11 PCs and handhelds to the future of XBOX console. The Microsoft GDK Plug-ins for Unreal Engine, publicly available in UE 5.8, give you a single path to build on Win64 to ship your games on all these devices. We will share the XBOX + Epic Games implementation plan, demonstrate plug-in features, and examine how Epic Games itself leveraged these plug-ins to build and launch Fortnite on XBOX on PC.