I tried Microsoft’s newly revealed Xbox gaming handheld
I played Gears of War on the upcoming ROG Xbox Ally X. Steam was on there, too. What Microsoft's portable Xbox is all about... the challenges it faces.
The images shown during a secret theater presentation I recently attended for the long-rumored Xbox handheld showed an icon on the system’s screen for the long-awaited indie game Silksong.
I was, alas, not about to play both.
I had to settle for experiencing just one of those two fabled futures during a meeting at Activision headquarters on Thursday, as officials from Microsoft’s Xbox team and PC maker Asus introduced me to their upcoming line of officially Xbox-branded gaming handhelds, the ROG Xbox Ally and ROG Xbox Ally X. (Bit of a mouthful there; so I’m going to drop the “ROG” for the rest of this, okay?)
No Silksong that day, but the Xbox Ally X that I used for about 10 minutes ran Gears of War: Reloaded, displayed a full-screen Xbox interface and apparently had Steam on it, too.
It ran nicely, felt good in my hands, all of which is to be expected, right? The controls felt like Xbox controller grips. The gameplay was crisp and clear.
As I played, I’d left the bag I’d carried on a cross-country flight in an adjacent room. The Switch 2 and Steam Deck OLED were in there. For many people, I could see an Xbox Ally potentially replacing the one that doesn’t play Mario Kart.
So, what do we know?
The Xbox Ally X and lower-spec Xbox Ally are slated for a holiday release (no announced price yet), and they certainly look like competitors to Valve’s Steam Deck.
Perhaps more significantly and more usefully, the Xbox Ally machines are the first Xbox-branded devices to match Microsoft’s recent boundary-breaking talk about broader accessibility to games, across devices and storefronts that are sometimes considered rivals.
Unlike an Xbox console, which only runs games made for that device, the Windows-based Xbox Ally line is expected to operate Windows games that are purchased via PC through Xbox, or from Blizzard’s Battle.net, GoG, Ubisoft Connect and Valve’s Steam. The Xbox Ally system software, which includes what officials at my briefing repeatedly called a “full-screen experience,” is designed to display a game library that pulls from all of those marketplaces—and from Xbox PC Game Pass—and runs all of those games.
When I asked Microsoft if that means that PlayStation’s recent God of War games, which have been released on PC, could run on these new Xbox-branded devices—a device with a big Xbox button and logo on it—a rep replied: “Because these handhelds run Windows, you have access to all the games you can play on Windows PCs.”
The new handhelds, as part of the Xbox ecosystem, will work with Microsoft’s “Play Anywhere” program, which grants a person who buys any of 1300+ game releases copies for Xbox and PC. Compatible games can be downloaded and played, which is the main way the machine is likely to be used. It’ll also stream games from cloud services, including Microsoft’s, and can run, via remote play, games from a nearby Xbox, Microsoft told me.
I will acknowledge that I’m far from the world’s best at assessing technical specs, but here are the key ones shared by Microsoft about the two devices:
ROG Xbox Ally - AMD Ryzen Z2 A Processor, 1080p 7” touchscreen, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD upgradeable storage, 60Wh battery, 670g weight
ROG Xbox Ally X -AMD Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme Processor, 1080p 7” touchscreen, 24GB RAM, 1TB SSD upgradeable storage, 80Wh battery, 715g weight
The screens are a little smaller than those of the Switch 2 (7.9”) and Steam Deck OLED (7.4”) and that Xbox Allies are slightly heavier, but Microsoft and Asus are touting performance and game compatibility.
“I think you will see the best performance, battery life and price in that kind of 15- to 20-watt range of any handheld in the market,” Microsoft head of gaming devices Roanne Sones said during the meeting at Activision’s offices, speaking specifically of the lower-end Xbox Ally.
While I was unsure exactly which devices she was comparing the Ally to, my understanding is that Microsoft believes gamers would find Xbox Ally performance in line with that of Steam Deck (and perhaps the comparable Switch 2, for that matter). Xbox Ally X is expected to be significantly beyond that.
Asus’ consumer vice president Shawn Yen said the Xbox Ally will offer a 720p gaming experience and that the Ally X would be for players wanting to play games on the go at 900p-1080p.
The technical performance of the new machines and their appeal to players will be dependent on how much power the devices need to operate and how quickly their batteries drain.
Microsoft isn’t estimating battery life yet, but they are promoting that the Xbox, Windows, Asus hardware and AMD chip teams worked closely to focus on efficient performance. Prior Windows-based handhelds, including Asus’s existing ROG Ally devices, which already run games from the Xbox PC Game Pass, run Windows in full. For gaming, the Xbox handhelds won’t.
“When this full screen experience loads, there's a whole lot of Windows that doesn't load,” vice president of Xbox experiences Jason Beaumont said, shortly before I took an Xbox Ally X in hand.
“Working with the Windows team, we basically said, ‘Hey, instead of loading the desktop wallpaper or the task bar and things that really aren't about this gaming experience, let's remove all of that and let's take all of the memory savings, all of different process and CPU cycles, let's give that to the game instead.’”
As I played Gears of War on the Xbox Ally X, Brianna Potvin, principal software engineering lead at Xbox, noted that the parts of Windows that weren’t loading had freed up 2GB of memory. And when the system was put in sleep mode from the Xbox full-screen experience, she said, it was drawing a third of the power as when the machine runs the full desktop version of Windows.
Xbox’s handheld gambit
Taking a step back, one of the remarkable developments of the Xbox handheld news is that it’s a partnership device. A recent report of Microsoft sidelining an Xbox handheld was specifically about it not rushing to make its own handheld version of its Xbox consoles. The Xbox Ally and Xbox Ally X are consistent with that. The devices do not run the operating system of the Xbox Series S and X consoles, and they won’t natively run games made specifically for those boxes.
Sones said that, before partnering with Asus on these new Xbox Ally devices, Microsoft had already polled retailers and game publishers about a potential handheld that would run Microsoft’s big operating system rather than Xbox’s. “We want to do it on Windows because we want to have the openness of and the flexibility of what that brings,” she said of the idea floated during its outreach.
The results are Xbox devices, using Windows 11, built by a third-party in Asus, with design input and software development from Microsoft. It’s enough to wonder exactly how Microsoft might approach its next-gen console, but for now, it’s the kind of partnership that produces a lot of executive talk about the magic of corporations working together (thus, no, they’re not talking price now—somewhat understandable given the unpredictability of U.S. tariffs—but they are talking about the Xbox/ROG co-branded microtexture printed on the device).
The most visible aspect of the Microsoft-Asus cross-company collaboration is an Xbox button on the Xbox Ally units, to the left of the screen. Tapping it loads the full-screen experience, which shows recently played games and featured titles in a manner similar to pressing a similar button on an Xbox controller to load the console’s home screen. When I held the Xbox button down on the Ally X, it loaded a switcher that snappily let me move from one game to other apps.
A new library button to the right of the screen brings up a view of the Xbox Ally machines’ consolidated game libraries, showing games from Xbox PC Game Pass, Steam and elsewhere. Microsoft says a badging system will show which games can be downloaded and run locally, which are available via streaming, and so on. The company is also developing some handheld compatibility standards and labeling, to ensure that players can tell if a game has been optimized for use on the handhelds (It sounds similar to Valve’s designation of some games as Steam Deck “verified".)
While Nintendo offers its Switch systems as hybrid devices that are sold with a TV-ready dock, it’s unclear the extent to which Microsoft and Asus believe that people could just buy an Xbox Ally (X) and have a satisfactory experience hooking it up to a big screen. “Yes, you can connect your Xbox Ally to an external display or monitor,” a Microsoft rep told me, but they had no word about any docks. “We will share more information on accessories for the ROG Xbox Ally at a later date.”
Who is it for?
A fundamental question about Microsoft’s official entry into handheld gaming is whether it sees devices such as the existing Steam Deck and the forthcoming Xbox Ally line as devices that are for:
a) a massive market that includes the 100-million-selling (but cheaper and weaker) original Switch…
b) a small but lucrative luxury market that excludes the Switch, or…
c) a currently niche market of higher-end handhelds that it believes it can blow up into the mainstream.
I posed that question to Microsoft a couple of days ago. They declined to say, but in August 2023, Microsoft’s head of gaming, Phil Spencer, seemed to be going with option C in an interview with Eurogamer. In it, he described the existing Asus ROG Ally as “my Xbox on the go”:
I know a lot about the Steam Deck. And things like the Asus ROG Ally. I don't think those are going to be niche devices - those are going to reach scale. They've sold millions of Steam Decks and they get used.
That was two years ago, and such devices have not reached the scale of Xboxes or PlayStations.
In February, industry research firm IDC told The Verge that the Steam Deck as well as Windows-based handhelds such as the ROG Ally totaled 1.5 million units sold in 2024.
Without numbers directly from the manufacturers, the estimates vary a bit.
Ampere Analysis sized the market of Steam Deck and other PC gaming handhelds at 5.3 million units sold, projecting growth to nearly 13 million in 2028, in data Ampere analyst Piers Harding-Rolls shared with Game File. The figures preceded today’s Xbox news.
Regardless of which count is more accurate, the totals are far less than the home consoles. Sony said PS5 sales from April 2024 through March 2025 reached 18.5 million units (Xbox doesn’t disclose their hardware sales but is assumed by analysts to be outsold by Sony by as much as two to one, still way more than the non-Switch handhelds).
The launch of the Switch 2 complicates things. While it doubles as a home console, complete with a bundled dock, and could reasonably be used by a gamer as TV-connected device without ever being taken out on the go, it’s significantly more powerful than its predecessor, and already runs some higher-end Steam Deck staples such as Cyberpunk 2077. Nintendo projects that Switch 2 will sell 15 million units in its first nine months.
Harding-Rolls told Game File that he’s “a bit reticent to bucket all handhelds into a single market but I can understand the thinking behind doing so.”
Nevertheless, before Microsoft’s Xbox Ally news was public, he told me he did see potential in Microsoft (or Sony) proceeding with dedicated handhelds of their own. It “comes down to the best product strategy to pursue, which balances hardware investment against driving engagement and further monetisation,” he said. “Microsoft has additional incentive to pursue a PC-led strategy in the handheld space as opposed to a more difficult Xbox console handheld, because of its legacy Windows business and its ongoing aims to build its PC gaming business.”
Putting “Xbox” on a handheld
Just how much of a market there is for an Xbox handheld will be made more clear in the holiday when the devices launch. Xbox’s rep is mixed these days. The company has promoted a player-friendly approach through its all-you-can-play Game Pass subscription service and the cross-buy Play Anywhere program. And in handhelds, it doesn’t need to spar with rival PlayStation. It will compete for attention, budget and bag-space with Nintendo, and with Valve.
Xbox is a more widely-known brand than Asus or ROG and one that conveys a certain amount of gaming convenience.
It’s also subject to a call for a boycott over parent company Microsoft’s work with the Israeli military amid the conflict in Gaza (allegations that have led to Microsoft employee protests and a company statement, but have not yet had noticeable impacts in terms of consumer reaction).
The last big console maker to get into handheld gaming was PlayStation, which from 2004 through 2019 pushed two portables, only to retreat from the market.
Nintendo itself bailed on dedicated handhelds with the 2017 launch of the Switch, now offering a single product line that doubles as a gaming portable and home console.
Xbox is making a big step with the Xbox Ally. It’ll be a long time before it’s clear where they will wind up.
Update - 10:39 am: A reader asked me if the new device’s console-like Xbox interface would be coming to other Windows handhelds. A Microsoft rep tells me it will. Their statement: “The Xbox full screen experience will come first to Ally and Ally X and we will update the in market ROG Ally and Ally X. Similar full screen Xbox experiences will be rolling out to other Windows handhelds beginning next year.”
Sounds great. I hope this is what they do for their next console, basically a Windows PC that's a native Xbox but also runs Steam and whatever else. Just like I think Nintendo should make a "Switch 2 box" cheaper with no screen, I think they should make this into a console as well (but maybe with higher specs if it's going to be their next console, if they even make a next console).
Precision timing from Game File. The first new handheld to hold my interest, so I picked up the phone for more info and there was this newsletter. I suspect Xbox is betting on Option C.