This week, the folks at Xbox invited me to go hands on with a brand new venture. The first console hardware partnership ever for Xbox – The ASUS ROG Xbox Ally X. While reports from our friends at Windows Central suggest a native ‘first party’ handheld device is now on the backburner, after going hands on, I think I’m starting to understand why. Read on friends, for my ROG Xbox Ally X Hands-on Impressions!
Two Flavours, All Xbox
The ROG Xbox Ally comes in two flavours – The more standard Xbox Ally and the much beefier and kitted out Xbox Ally X. The white version (Why it’s not called the Xbox Ally S is beyond me) is the planned to be the more affordable of the two devices with smaller storage capacity and less memory, among other cost saving reductions. The chip for this one is the Z2A, which has been optimised by the team. Per Roanne Sones, Head of Xbox Devices, “it has the best balance of price, performance and power of any handheld in in the market.” While they had one on display, I didn’t get to go hands on with it on this occasion.
What I did get to play around with is the much beefier big brother, the Xbox Ally X. This handheld monster utilises the AMD Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme Processor , and Roanne tells me it has a dedicated AI accelerator and processor. “The benefit of being able to have that as a separate piece of silicon is that you can build experiences without impacting gameplay because you can still keep 100% of the GPU focused on games.“
Like many of you, I internally eye roll at most mentions of “AI” nowadays, with many companies inserting the term repeatedly, searching for a solution to a problem that doesn’t yet exist. Roanne seemed to know that many in the gaming space feel that way, saying “I know there’s questions on AI and a variety of feelings around what that will bring. I will say I think it’s our job in building devices and hardware to really push the boundaries of what’s possible. We put it into the hands of players and then the reality is developers dream from that point in time. And so this was very much us forward proofing what the Xbox Ally X is as these experiences do start to come to market, you’re going to be in a position where you can now seamlessly integrate those into the design and the quality of the experience will just keep evolving. And that’s in large part because of how we have future proofed the silicon that’s in there.“
The story of how this came to be is an interesting one, and marks the first occasion of an established console manufacturer like Xbox partnering with another to release console-level hardware. Normally, such relationships are reserved for headphones or controllers and so on.
Shawn Yen from Asus explained that his team wanted to take their Ally efforts to the next level, but realised they couldn’t do it alone. “That’s where we went to Microsoft to help us out. We have the same obsession. Let’s join forces and build a handheld for gamers that really need it.”
Roanne expands a little more, “It was big deal for us to be doing this in a co-branded way with ASUS versus actually delivering a ‘first-party’ handheld. Xbox has never done this before – Ever. It was a really, really big decision. I actually went to a number of top retailers and a number of top publishers.
And I said, ‘Hey, I I want to go do this and I want to do it co-branded because I see what’s happening in the Windows category. I actually think that being able to play all your games is integral to the value proposition of the product. And I think that there’s an ability for us to be quick and agile and and try something different.’
They were all quite supportive, they had a real clear bar on what they wanted to be true from the experience perspective in order to have something carry the Xbox brand. And then I basically said ‘Magic Wand, who do you want me to work with, If we’re going to go pull this thing off?’ and unanimously everybody came back and said ASUS.“
The Power of an Xbox in the palm of your hand
First off, as a current ROG Ally X owner, holding the Xbox Ally X in your hands you can’t help but notice the immediate improvement in how the device sits in your hands. It really does feel like holding a slight heavier Xbox Elite Controller. As someone who already delights in pads that let you add additional weights, it felt great.
Ergonomically, that’s the biggest change. We also have our ABXY Xbox buttons, and the guide button is here too, though not in it’s usual spherical form. Instead, it’s been placed on the far left of the device, keeping the more angular design stylings of ROG. It doesn’t look as derpy as say the PlayStation Portal, and obviously has a lot more going on under the hood.
The plan here of course, is to continue the original mission of the ROG Ally, enabling gamers to play their games from multiple stores on one compact and capable device, powered by Windows 11. But as any existing ROG Ally owner will tell, the worst thing about the ROG Ally? Windows itself.
Anytime Windows had to appear on your handheld, from login, to the god awful virtual keyboard, to background tasks sucking precious resources, the operating system made using the ROG Ally occasionally painful, even with ASUS’ efforts with their Armory Crate application. Thankfully, the Xbox Ally X brings with it a whole new front-end – while still being powered by Windows 11 Home – it makes it feel so much more like a console than ever before.
Taking Control
The first thing to note about the new handheld Xbox experience is how intuitive it is for anyone used to navigating either the Xbox Console dashboard or Xbox PC app. The login screen is replaced with a contextual PIN login, and just like Xbox, each button has a controller button assigned it (If you’ve ever used a PIN on console for parental controls, it’s exactly the same). Of course you can still use the built-in finger print reader too.
The Home Experience has a couple of really great features. First to note is the Jump Back in section, which does just what it says. If you were playing elsewhere, it’ll follow you activity so you can stay on task with whatever game you’re playing. And if you haven’t got it installed on your device locally? It’ll happily boot up the cloud option instead, or let you remote stream it from another device locally on the same network. Pretty nifty.
A press of the Xbox Nexus will bring up the Game Bar, which can navigated either by touch or the bumpers, just like on console. You can also see performance metrics, as well capture options, settings and more.
You can also access the updated Command Center, which has been completely integrated into Game Bar on the left of the home widget. From there you can adjust wifi, bluetooth, performance, screen brightness etc with ease.
You may notice Windows just…isn’t here, at least on the surface. The team have removed several components of Windows. Jason, Head of the User Experience Team at Xbox had clear goals for the team when it came to how the handheld experience should work. “We had two very simple, straightforward, clear goals for the team. The first was that we felt players wanted a console like experience on these Windows handhelds. They wanted to hit the power button, go directly into a full screen experience that then involved going to the Windows desktop where they could play all the games across all of their storefronts. The second one was that the Windows operating system itself just wasn’t built for this form factor, and they wanted to see changes to the operating system to make it something that was more applicable. And we made this with those two goals in mind.”
The result is something that truly feels transformative, and having gone back to my ROG Ally X later that day, made the difference of how the device feels to hold and use all the more stark. Beyond fooling around with the UI, I also got to play a little bit of Gears of War: Reloaded, but I’ll share more on that at a later date.
Questions Remain
While I’ve come away from my time with the ROG Xbox Ally X pretty impressed, there are still a number of questions that remain. With this new interface, how does one load up, install and login to all these other Game storefronts exactly? Just how much does Windows ‘get out of the way’?
Of all the questions though, the biggest one is price. The ROG Ally X retailed at £800 when I got hold of one, and I think that price has only gone up since then. The Xbox Ally X is newer, faster and feels altogether more premium, so one would assume a very premium price.
There’s also the question surrounding its cheaper, more affordable sibling. Will ASUS and Micrsoft aim for Switch 2 level or Steamdeck level pricing in order to stay competitive?
This is however, a hardware partnership first for Xbox, and I do wonder if some form of subsidising from Microsoft could be on the cards to make it more affordable for gamers – though if anything like that happens, it’ll be the cheaper Xbox Ally that gets the attention.
With Summer Games Fest drawing to a close, I look forward to learning more – perhaps Gamescom Microsoft?
