A new console announcement has ended over a decade of speculation, as Xbox has finally entered the handheld console market with the ROG Xbox Ally. It’s expected to rival competitors like the Steam Deck and the Nintendo Switch 2.
While home consoles have been the predominant choice for most gamers worldwide in the past few decades, it emerged as a rather bizarre coincidence that Xbox had never given its own input into the space.
Nintendo has obviously been the dominant force, especially now that its last two consoles have bridged the gap between home and portable solutions, but PlayStation has been no stranger to gaming on the go with the PSP and PS Vita.
There has been plenty of movement outside of gaming's current 'big three' console makers, too. Aptly named handheld PCs have been released by a number of major hardware manufacturers, including the aforementioned Steam Deck, Lenovo Legion Go, and ASUS ROG Ally.
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It is the latter that serves as part of Xbox's new historic move, though, as Microsoft has joined forces with ASUS to finally release its first-ever handheld console, as reported by the BBC.
Announced at the recent Xbox showcase as part of Summer Game Fest, the ROG Xbox Ally takes a familiar form to its ROG predecessor but with a distinctly Game Pass twist.
The notion of 'everything' being an Xbox has become a key part of Microsoft's recent marketing, and this plays a major role in that development, as you'll now be able to access the hundreds of games currently on the Game Pass subscription library while on the go.
You can choose to either download the titles natively or stream them from the cloud if you've got good enough internet, and it also boasts impressive hardware inside that'll limit the compromises you'd expect from a portable gadget such as this.
There are two different versions to choose from: the Xbox Ally boasts an AMD Ryzen Z2 A processor, 16GB of RAM, and 512GB of SSD storage, whereas the enhanced Xbox Ally X has an 'Extreme' version of the same processor alongside 24GB of RAM and double the storage.
You'll also be able to take advantage of AMD's AI-powered FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) technology to boost your frame rates through upscaling, which is similar to what you might be familiar with on the PS5 Pro.
Perhaps one underrated feature that many fans are excited about is the announcement of an 'optimized' version of Windows that'll help ensure that everything runs as smoothly as possible.
"The optimized Windows announcement is arguably MUCH bigger than the handheld itself," writes one rather optimistic commenter on YouTube. "Windows on handhelds has been a terrible experience since... always. Getting a version that kills bloat and actually considers the controls a user has available might just have saved Windows in this segment."
There is still some disappointment to do with certain decisions, though, as the display specifications have deflated some excitement around the announcement.
"If this was OLED, it would be a monster of a handheld device," argues one user, and it's hard not to see this as a slight downside when rivals like the Steam Deck already have the superior display.
Price might be a factor in this, especially as the existing ROG Ally models range between $650 and $800. Still, it's currently unknown where exactly the new Xbox variant will land when it drops in the holiday period later this year.