Revealed yesterday during the summer Xbox Games Showcase, the Asus ROG Xbox Ally is closer to a Steam Deck than a PSP or Nintendo Switch. Essentially, it’s a spin on Asus’ existing handheld gaming PC, the ROG Ally, but with Xbox style grips, an Xbox button, and a sleeker approach to Windows that skips most of the guff and takes you right to a game launcher (where you'll find all your various game stores, including Steam and Epic) that you can navigate entirely with your controller.
In other words, it isn’t a portable Xbox, it's a handheld gaming PC with Xbox branding.
A better Windows-based gaming experience, for a price
And yet, Microsoft doesn’t have to compete with just the Steam Deck anymore. Notably, this announcement came on the weekend after the Nintendo Switch 2 launched, and it’s hard not to see it as at least a little out-of-date.
Also, the ROG Xbox Ally is ugly. While official dimensions aren’t out yet, it also appears to be a little thick, and on the heavier side.Pricing hasn’t been revealed yet either, but based on the specs Microsoft offered up, and the existing ROG Ally pricing, we can probably expect the two models of this thing (the ROG Xbox Ally and ROG Xbox Ally X) to come in at around $600 and $1,000, respectively.
Credit: Michelle EhrhardtIn short, it’s a more iterative change, which is unfortunate for a debut handheld. There are benefits to a more usable Windows-based gaming handheld—notably, the Steam Deck can’t run games with anti-cheat, plus the Xbox experience is supposed to make it quicker to run games that aren’t from Steam than they'll run on the Steam Deck (which can also run games from other launchers, but only after jumping through a few hoops). But the Steam Deck has always been my go-to handheld gaming PC recommendation for a reason: it’s affordable, simple to use, and has good-enough performance. The ROG Xbox Ally seems poised to take the mantle of simplicity, but I’m skeptical that the performance bumps (it will use a newer processor than the Steam Deck) will be enough to justify the cost.
Not really a handheld Xbox
Speaking of, I’ve been playing with the Switch 2 over the weekend, and this thing is sleek. My full review is still forthcoming, but in summary, it's thin, light, looks a heck of a lot better than the Xbox handheld, runs like a dream, and is still cheaper than the forthcoming Xbox device. Sure, it’s limited in ways a full PC isn’t, but that also makes it more approachable. The Switch 2 feels like a peek at the future of mainstream handheld gaming, while Xbox’s handheld feels more like a stopgap. (Though I'd still recommend the Steam Deck to most handheld PC gamers, and the Switch 2 to any console fans looking for a new handheld.)
Maybe I'm expecting too much. It's a lot, thinking that Xbox might be able to compete with Nintendo on its first handheld attempt. But the company’s “This is an Xbox” campaign has also been adamant on pushing its cloud streaming and Game Pass experiences over its hardware, and a sleeker, more affordable Xbox handheld could have been a great compliment to that, and helped it carve out a niche as a Steam Deck-alike for people coming from console gaming, or the handheld for Switch gamers who want something a bit more hardcore. Instead, it seems like a nice upgrade for people who were already sold on the idea of the ROG Ally, and nobody else.
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