The Switch 2 is about to get another competitor in the increasingly crowded handheld gaming market.
First revealed in June and set for release in October, the ROG Xbox Ally from Asustek Computer Inc was available to play in person for the first time at the Gamescom trade fair in Cologne this month. Together with a souped-up Xbox Ally X edition, this device is a collaboration with Microsoft Corp to extend the Xbox ecosystem into a handheld form factor that Nintendo Co rejuvenated with the Switch.
Built around a 7in display and a similar arrangement of buttons and analogue sticks to the Switch, the Xbox Ally offers three options for play. Users can either play games directly on the device – which runs Windows 11 on an Advanced Micro Devices Inc processor – stream them from the cloud in regions where that’s supported, or use Remote Play to connect to the games running on their Xbox at home.
On the Gamescom show floor, visitors queued for 30 minutes or more for the chance to experience titles such as Doom Eternal and Forza Horizon 5 on the new machines. Both titles – produced by Xbox-owned studios and now years old, but still featuring advanced graphics – were running natively on the higher-end version of the device. Doom occasionally suffered some frame rate drops, but it was nothing that couldn’t be solved by adjusting the Ally’s graphical presets.
Even on the less powerful Xbox Ally, 2021’s Forza was still playable. The open-world racing game didn’t stutter once in an extended play-through, as a custom Ford Focus made its way around the truncated vision of Mexico that serves as the game’s setting. Microsoft and Asus mostly steered players of the lower-spec Ally version to demos of less graphically intensive titles. Hollow Knight: Silksong, the long-awaited sequel to 2017’s Hollow Knight, was playable at the Xbox booth while Asus was showing off the addictive poker roguelike Balatro.
Gaming handhelds have emerged as a growing category over the last five years, as devices such as Valve Corp’s Steam Deck and Lenovo Group Ltd’s Legion Go gained popularity. Asus has been an early player in this space, as companies have built devices to take PC gaming portable and challenge Nintendo. 1.7 million such PCs were sold in 2024 and this year is expected to take sales up to 2.3 million, according to data from researchers at Omdia.
“Windows 11’s upcoming refreshed gaming mode is expected to dramatically improve the user experience on PC gaming handhelds,” said James McWhirter, senior analyst at Omdia. “This, coupled with the first Xbox-branded handhelds launching in late 2025, provide potential for devices to resonate with a broader audience.”
While each device approaches the category slightly differently, the basic premise is that they provide users with access to more graphically intensive games while on the go.
Microsoft and Asus tout access to an unprecedented back catalogue of titles via Xbox Game Pass. Those already optimized to run on Windows will be playable directly on the Ally, and any that are console-specific will be accessible via the cloud, the companies said.
In a video released to coincide with the conference, Microsoft also teased access to multiple other PC storefronts. Battle.net from Microsoft subsidiary Activision Blizzard, the Epic Games Store and Valve’s Steam will all be among the libraries accessible on the new device.
The more powerful Xbox Ally X will use an AMD Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme Processor and 1TB of storage. Its display is smaller than the higher-end Steam Deck OLED, but the difference is unlikely to be noticeable to the average gamer. The hardware held up well in limited testing by Bloomberg News at Gamescom.
More impressive than anything else about the Xbox Ally is its ergonomics. Helped by Xbox controller-style grips on either side of the screen, the gadget feels more natural to hold and use than any of the other equivalent mobile gaming PCs. While technically weighing more than some of its immediate competitors, it doesn’t have the same unwieldy sense of proportion that sometimes holds them back.
While neither Asus nor Microsoft gave an official price for the console during the conference, previous versions of the ROG Ally retailed between US$650 and US$850 in the US. The Xbox Ally and Xbox Ally X will go on sale from Oct 16. – Bloomberg
