The ROG Xbox Ally X surprised me with how light it felt the first time I picked it up. Despite being one of the heaviest PC gaming handhelds, it doesn’t actually feel overbearing or burdensome. The controller grips on the sides might make it look goofy but they also make it more comfortable, so the battery life will stop me from playing long before tired arms or cramping wrists. And none of this will matter if the price isn’t right.
An October 16 release date for the Xbox-branded Asus hardware was revealed at Gamescom 2025. That was two weeks ago. Now we’re 42 days from launch and there’s still no pre-order page or even an official price tag. The latter is seemingly under review following the latest U.S. tariff updates from President Trump’s White House. But if, for whatever reason, it ends up costing double the price of a Switch 2 or Steam OLED as some leaks have suggested it will, it’s going to have some big shoes to fill. I’m not sure neat paddles on the sides, a new AMD Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme chip, and a slick UI overhaul alone will be able to justify the experiment.
I went hands-on with the Xbox Ally X (the more powerful of the two upcoming models) at Microsoft’s offices last week in Seattle during PAX West and came away with what felt like a glimpse of where the tech giant could take Windows gaming in the future, as well as lots of questions about where it will actually be come this fall. When he tried it at Summer Game Fest earlier this year, Kotaku‘s Kenneth Shepard lamented handheld gaming’s newfound obsession with replicating high-end PC and console experiences on the go. I came away from my hands-on demo more curious about how the PC gaming handheld could reshape the Xbox home console experience moving forward.
The Xbox Ally is Microsoft’s attempt to bolt a gaming OS onto Windows so the average person can turn it on and boot up a game without ever having to navigate a task bar or desktop shortcut. Turn the handheld on and it boots directly into the new OS layer running on top of Windows 11. Accidentally crash it by trying to navigate around too fast or hitting a button when you’re not supposed to, as I did several times, and that dreaded error window will pierce through the overlay like an unwanted virus alert.
The experiment won’t be worth it if Microsoft and Asus can’t figure out a decent price tag, but it won’t mean anything at all if they can’t keep the new UI stable enough to successfully trick you into forgetting that the Xbox Ally, contrary to catchy marketing, is still actually a Windows PC. When it does work, the promise of the Xbox Ally shines through unmistakably: your PC game library made easy to navigate and play on already proven hardware. Tags for every game tell you if it can run at high settings or if it’s yet to be tested.
Much has been made of how the Xbox UI will automatically pull in games you already own on Steam, letting you launch them from within the Xbox layer without having to separately descend back into Windows and open them manually. Can you buy Steam games directly from within the Xbox layer as well? Microsoft hasn’t confirmed that yet.
The idea may simply be that most people will buy Steam games on their actual PCs, then have them easily accessible when they move over to the Xbox Ally where they will then also have Game Pass waiting for them. The Xbox Ally is the first step in a new race with Valve to see which company can make accessing its competitor’s products on its own devices more frictionless, and Game Pass on SteamOS is still a pain.
Perhaps the biggest coup for the Xbox Ally team within Microsoft is a feature that lets you hold down the dedicated Xbox button to quickly navigate between apps just like you might on a smartphone. It feels like an evolution of Quick Resume on console, by far Microsoft’s biggest contribution to the current console generation experience outside of Game Pass. If only every gaming handheld made it so easy to toggle between games, Discord, and the web. If only every gaming handheld even had Discord.
Speaking of the Switch 2, I brought it to the demo for size comparison purposes. I spent most of my time on the Xbox Ally playing Hollow Knight: Silksong, a game I will be buying on my Switch 2 when it comes out this week. The original game on the original Switch was an ideal handheld experience, as evidenced by how few of Kotaku‘s staff at the time even played it before it came to Nintendo’s console. The sequel only costs $20 and will not be testing any PC gaming handheld benchmarks. Do you really need a $600, $800, or even $1,000 PC gaming handheld to enjoy it?
Over 150 million Switches sold proves there’s a market for cheap gaming handhelds. Six million PC gaming handhelds sold, meanwhile, suggests there is not yet a market for the high-end ones, at least not one that can meaningfully profit a public company investing $80 billion a year in AI. But even if a trade war ultimately makes the Xbox Ally dead on arrival, at least in the U.S., I’m glad to see companies trying. There are a lot of cool ideas in there and I’d love to see how they could be applied to console gaming in the future.
