Kicking off today’s Xbox Showcase stream was the announcement of one of the worst kept secrets in gaming: an Xbox handheld. After months of speculation and leaks, Microsoft has finally confirmed what we all thought was happening: Microsoft is partnering with Asus to create a variant of its ROG Ally handheld PCs created for Xbox titles. Considering how Microsoft has pivoted to claiming everything is an Xbox as of late, it only makes sense that the company would shift focus away from traditional hardware and onto branded devices that can accomplish the same thing.
They showed off two different handheld versions: the ROG Xbox Ally and the Xbox Ally X. As you could probably guess from the name, the X version is merely a more powerful iteration of the device with not only more RAM, but double the storage space. The standard Xbox Ally comes packed with an AMD Ryzen Z2 A, 16 GB of RAM, and 512 GB of storage. The Xbox Ally X houses an AMD Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme, 24 GB of RAM, and 1 TB of storage. That’s a pretty substantial uplift in not only performance, but capacity.
The trailer didn’t make it clear if games would be running natively on the device as it mentions you can stream titles to it. I think that certain games won’t be playable simply because handheld PCs aren’t anywhere near as performant as a desktop, so Xbox Game Pass streaming will handle those titles. For smaller games, this device should blow through pretty much anything thrown at it.
As a direct competitor to the Switch 2, it will be interesting to see if people gravitate towards this device instead of Nintendo’s. The main thing that will curb interest is a lack of exclusive games, which Microsoft is still struggling with some six years after acquiring a laundry list of studios.
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Written by Peter Glagowski
Peter has been a freelance gaming and film critic for over seven years. His passion for Nintendo is only matched by the size of his collection.
