The ROG Xbox Ally X, regardless of having a really awkward identify, is a really spectacular machine. Our Dave likes it very a lot, however discovered the key sticking level to be the massively excessive $1,000 price ticket—and it is not just like the non-X variant is especially low-cost both, at $600.
Chatting with Selection, Xbox president Sarah Bond says which you can blame Asus for that one, because the pricing was primarily based on its suggestions.
“We checked out, how will we create a number of choices for folks? And it actually was Asus, as a result of that is their {hardware},” stated Bond. “That’s all of their perception into the market, into the function set, into what folks need, to find out the last word costs of the units.
“I really feel actually good concerning the worth that we’re giving players for the value, primarily based off the reception to the {hardware}.”
It has been well-received by reviewers general, that is for certain. And in accordance with Bond, the pre-order response was fairly spectacular, too: “We offered out of the Xbox Retailer. We offered actually shortly at plenty of different locations all over the world.”
Picture 1 of 6
The Xbox president appears happy as punch on the reception to its first main foray into the hand held gaming world, calling its spectacular pre-order gross sales figures, “an actual affirmation of one thing that we all know and have been working in direction of for a extremely very long time, which is gaming ought to act like leisure.”
“It needs to be one thing you may have with you wherever,” they proceed. “It’s best to be capable to play any recreation you need with anybody you need on any system.”
Properly sure, handheld gaming PCs are an excellent factor certainly, and as a lot as Microsoft likes to assert in its promoting that “that is an Xbox”, we discovered the ROG Ally X to be, properly… a handheld gaming PC, albeit one sporting an Xbox UI.
And as for that pricing? It appears MS is eager to level the finger at Asus, probably as a result of it’s kind of of an eye-watering determine and in any other case it is totally chargeable for pricing up the costliest Xbox console of all time, all by itself.
And it should be stated, the common Asus ROG Ally X (that includes the older AMD Ryzen Z1 Excessive APU, reasonably than the Z2 discovered within the Xbox mannequin) is not precisely low-cost, retailing at round $800, and we discovered the ROG Xbox Ally X to be considerably quicker within the gaming benchmarks.
Actually, it is the quickest handheld gaming PC we have examined up to now. So, you are getting considerably extra efficiency when you stump up for the Xbox mannequin over absolutely anything else in the marketplace proper now. And handles. We will not overlook concerning the handles.
Nevertheless it does make me surprise how a lot the Xbox branding contributed to the tip worth, even when Asus was within the driving seat. In any case, whereas Asus is hardly a small participant within the tech world, slapping an Xbox badge on the system (together with these handles, natch) will need to have factored into the pricing determination someplace, as it is a hugely-recognisable model that’ll probably draw much more consideration than the newest Asus handheld gaming PC.
And the way all this works by way of licensing agreements, we might by no means really know. Nonetheless, we do know that the ROG Xbox Ally X has a foolish identify, is an excellent moveable gaming machine, and that it is costly.
“That is an Xbox”, eh? Nah, it looks like the extra we take a look at it, the extra it is an Asus machine—at the very least in a lot of the ways in which matter.
Greatest handheld PC 2025
All our present suggestions
