During Microsoft’s annual Xbox Games Showcase today, the company officially announced its Xbox handheld devices: the ROG Xbox Ally and the ROG Xbox Ally X.
The ROG Xbox Ally will come in two forms when it releases this holiday season: the white Xbox Ally and the black Xbox Ally X. Serving as the entry level device is the Xbox Ally. It uses an AMD Ryzenâ„¢ Z2 A Processor, has 16 GB of RAM, and comes with 512 GB of storage. The Xbox Ally X is the high-end model, with its AMD Ryzenâ„¢ AI Z2 Extreme processor, 24 GB of RAM, 1 TB of storage, and impulse triggers. You can find the full spec list for the handhelds on the Xbox Wire blog.
As the result of a collaboration with ASUS, these Xbox branded handhelds don’t look too different from the current ROG handhelds on the market. Where the Xbox Ally handhelds differ visually is with the hand grips that are akin to those on an Xbox controller, and the inclusion of an Xbox button next to the left analog stick.
As Microsoft tells the story, these handhelds were made with the goal of merging the Xbox experience with a Windows-based gaming handheld. The Xbox Ally handhelds will allow you to play your games natively on the device, as well as via cloud streaming and remote play with your Xbox console. They also take full advantage of Xbox’s Play Anywhere program, allowing you to play every supported game in your Xbox library on the handhelds, with full cross-save functionality.
What’s key to making using the ROG Xbox Ally as simple as possible is the “Xbox full screen experience” that was made specifically for handheld gaming. Although these are Windows-based devices, they’ve been optimized to prioritize gaming, which should allow your games to run better and look better. Being Windows 11 devices also brings access to PC gaming features such as mod support and Discord, but more importantly are PC game platforms such as Steam and Battle.net and their full libraries. This Xbox full screen experience will combine your gaming libraries across services, making it as easy as possible to switch between them and play the games you want, whenever you want.
Prices for the ROG Xbox Ally and Xbox Ally X haven’t been announced yet, and neither have accessories or pre-order dates, but Microsoft says we can expect to learn about all that in the coming months. If recent price changes in the Xbox ecosystem are anything to go by, I wouldn’t expect these handhelds to be cheap.
Microsoft’s first steps into the handheld gaming space have been long awaited. They were rumored for a long time before Xbox’s Phil Spencer confirmed the company was indeed working on its own handheld late last year. Just a week ago, Windows Central reported that Microsoft was putting those plans on hold and focusing more on the collaboration with ASUS, previously known as Project Kennan. It remains to be seen whether Microsoft will continue to pursue their own, in-house handheld. With strong competition in the PC gaming handheld space from Valve’s Steam Deck, and the recently released Nintendo Switch 2, the success of the Xbox Ally handhelds will likely be indicators of how the company proceed with its plans. Nevertheless, it’s exciting to see Microsoft’s vision of Xbox being a platform that’s in many places outside of just the console come to fruition.
TheComfySpot 