This got me thinking that Valve is the best competitor to Xbox. Instead of getting to release some walled garden, single store handheld they have to open it up to other stores because otherwise people would just buy a SteamDeck.
But everyone who cares about handheld gaming already has a steam deck and this is going to be more expensive so I don’t see the point anyway.
Moar power! More more more more!!!
boots up an indie roguelite
I guess they are trying to get people already paying for game pass to buy it, because you can play everything on it. But then people won’t be able to cancel their subscription or they’ll have a very expensive paperweight without games.
“Freedom of Windows” “Power of Xbox” Good stuff. We should make some more. “From a brand you can trust” "Pro gamers choose … " “Powered by Copilot and Game pass”
Well gamepass on a cheap handheld doesn’t sound so bad tbh
and copilot on a cheap handheld that cannot do anything except record you 24/7 and send it off to MS servers?
Less good
I’d argue it’s outright bad, especially with MS headquartered in a country that already has the NSA recording everything, and now a fascist dictator in control of all of that recorded traffic.
“Relive past game moments with recall” “Totally not going to be dropped in 3 years”
Players on either device will be able to tap into Gaming Copilot …
…yeah
Oh dear god it is apparently serious.
https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2025/06/08/xbox-handheld-rog-ally-x-games-showcase/
Any guesses for MSRP?
$1200 for the X variant?
$600?
Will MSFT bet the farm, take the upfront loss on the unit, and try to convince everyone this is both their next handheld and their next mainline living room console at the same time?
Nah. The ROG Ally X they already make with windows 11 and 1 TB is $800+tax. The ROG Ally that came before it was $700 and currently sells for like $400 or so.
The 2TB Rog Ally X is about $1k + tax. I honestly doubt they can get people to pay more than that for a handheld, regardless of the Z2 chip. They are having trouble selling the ones they currently make. Add to this that Lenovo just launched the steam os variant of their newest handheld and it’s significantly cheaper.
I appreciate the info and analysis!
The reason I have no idea what the pricing will be… is that well, GPU prices are nonsense that stick nowhere near MSRP, we got tariffs, we got all game prices getting jacked up, we got massive layoffs at MSFT, they are hurting for money…
And unless this handheld significantly outperforms other existing handhelds… I just don’t think many would buy it at basically any price…
But I also think MSFT is delusional about that, and I don’t think they have the depth of coin in their pockets to try to do a loss leader approach, and I think they’re more likely to just price it the same way cars and houses and rent are ludicrously overpriced, a price based more on ‘we need to pay our debts’ than on ‘how do we have a sensible long term strategy in this market’.
Who the fuck announces a product on a Sunday? They must not have much hope this will sell…
Today was the xbox showcase
Right? Xbox showcase is always on a Sunday. Even when E3 was a thing.
Man, when people hate on something, they really turn off all logical parts of their brain, or at least the critical thinking part.
Don’t worry it’s going to launch with silksong. Don’t really know what’s the point of releasing a game along a cross-platform console but I guess the publicity is good.
I’m so hoping Microsoft eats some of the cost of this and makes it a reasonable price. Think of the awesomeness of $600-700 handheld console that can be much more easily modded than the switch 2.
I would love for that to be the case as well… but it wouldn’t make any sense for MSFT to do the first part, and I strongly suspect they do not have the finances to do the second part.
They used to lower the price of Xboxes/?Xbeexes? lower than actual profit margins because they could get more in game sales.
I think the finances are no longer there though to do that but I think it would inspire people to get the game pass more if they did.
Honestly
As compared to consoles? Windows is pretty free.
Other than the Windows tax, ads, bloatware, constant intrusive up-sell attempts…
Again
COMPARED TO CONSOLES? That’s basically paradise.
Modern, unhacked and unmodded Consoles are:
-
Completely locked down, not only do they not let you install applications not approved by the manufacturer, in reality you can ONLY buy them from the manufacturer and you pay a hefty tax for that “privilege”.
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Feeding you ads and upsell attempts whenever you turn them on, as the UI has basically been redesigned to try to sell you more shit first and make getting to your actual games take a few extra steps
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Any undesired feature in a console’s OS is something you just have to accept and move on. Powerusers killing Windows bloat with third party tools is a time-honoured tradition that goes back to Windows 3.11
I’m not saying Windows is good.
I’m saying that for someone coming from a PlayStation or a traditional XBoXSeXxxx (I love making jokes out of this name), this whitelabelled ROG Ally machine would feel like finally being able to breathe. Just for the fact that you can use more than one storefront and install applications from wherever you want.
Let me put it this way:
Linux is an anarchist commune. True freedom.
Windows is an American Style Capitalist Republic. Freedom*********** with a thousand asterisks more. BUT for someone coming from the North Korea that is playing on consoles (or using an iOS mobile device or…), it DOES feel like finally breathing free.
Also, compared to something like the Switch? I don’t see MS remotely bricking these devices if you run “homebrew” on them.
That’s a really good comparison
-
Compared to Xbox OS, Windows is very free.
ROFL More like chains of Microsoft!
We’ve known for a bit they were going to do this.
I saw that it’s a trimmed down version of windows so I’m interested in giving it a chance. Who knows, maybe we will be able to install said trimmed down version on regular hardware which would be interesting.
You can always use a debloat script to fix a lot of issues. Nothing will help with Windows broken, ancient architecture, but the scripts do help.
Who is this for?
Everyone that is scared they can’t play the most popular online games on their handheld. So theoretically a massive demographic according to research (most pc gamers play older live service titles) done but whether they would want a gaming handheld is a different question.
There’s apparently a chunk of gamers who can’t leave Windows because of GamePass. However, I don’t know whether it’s a significant portion.
34 million people are on all Xbox game pass versions. How much of that is on PC game pass, I have no idea.
I am more thinking of the Valorant, League, Call of Duty, Fortnite, etc… players. Which are a majority of pc gamers.
There are different clusters of users who don’t/can’t leave Windows.
- Don’t want to learn another OS at all (They are content with the Windows experience)
- Gamepass users. They enjoy the Netflix model of getting free games
- Multiplayer (with anti-cheat) gamers
- Don’t want to leave the Adobe suite/
- Uses programs which don’t have Linux equivalent
The Linux community has to understand that some of these groups cannot be moved to Linux no matter how much you improve the Linux experience.
I am talking for handhelds which are treated as consoles so the underlying os or gui makes no difference. Unless it stops you from playing the game you like.
No one should tell you to leave an os if it works for you.
No one should tell you to leave an os if it works for you
I agree.
Some people have a special comfort with Windows AND telemetry, ads, bloat are not a concern for them. We should not try to force them to move.
The only thing it will do is turn off potential users because they either feel attacked for using a perfectly useable os or they do want want to be associated with the onmine culture around the os.
penny arcade? Wow, are they even still around? I havent seen anyone talk about or reference them for…god… 10 years?
Penny Arcade Expo is one of the biggest gaming conventions in America (and Aus) so I’d say yeah. I think they still make the comic too.
It’s still around, but it hasn’t been funny for a long-ass time.
🧐
Are they about to do some kind of shitty silk song gamepass exclusive??
That’s a typo, it’s supposed to be an R in the middle there, not an F
Yes it is a joke
Oh, Paul Marketing, you crazy fellow.
