Xbox‘s new handheld device has been out for 24 hours and the response to the ROG Xbox Ally and pricier ROG Xbox Ally X has been overwhelmingly positive from early reviewers.
But as with every major release within the gaming community, the Ally’s launch has prompted questions surrounding cost vs. value, who exactly the handheld console is meant for, and how the new on-the-go-PC-style product (made in partnership with Taiwanese electronics company Asus) might impact Microsoft Gaming’s plans for more full-scale Xbox gaming consoles.
First up, Xbox president Sarah Bond tells Variety that the price tags for the Ally ($599.99) and Ally X ($999.99) were largely determined by manufacturer Asus.
“We looked at, how do we create multiple options for people? And it really was Asus, because this is their hardware,” Bond said Thursday during a launch event for the Ally devices. “That is all of their insight into the market, into the feature set, into what people want, to determine the ultimate prices of the devices.”
Despite the steep price, Bond says that when pre-orders opened on September, “the reaction was overwhelming demand for the device.” “We sold out on the Xbox Store. We sold really quickly at a number of other places around the world,” Bond said. “I feel really good about the value that we’re giving gamers for the price, based off the reception to the hardware.”
Courtesy of Microsoft
Bond says the pre-launch results are “a real confirmation of something that we know and have been working towards for a really long time, which is gaming should act like all entertainment: it should be something you can have with you anywhere. You should be able to play any game you want with anyone you want on any device.”
Xbox decided to partner with Asus to develop the Ally line of handhelds “to really begin to transform the experience and take it to that next level in a way that we could do partnered much quicker, and in a much more innovative way, than we could [individually] with what we were each doing,” Bond says.
The first step in the process was prioritizing the ergonomic design of the Ally and Ally X: “We took everything we knew about what it took to make a controller, what it actually feels like for things to work in a variety of hand sizes, what it feels like to play for three hours and worked on the ergonomics of the device to make it super, super comfortable,” the Xbox president said.
Once the hands-on experience was sorted, Bond says the Xbox team’s next call was to Microsoft’s PC department.
“We partnered with the Windows team to think about the Windows experience on the device and to make sure it was optimized,” Bond said. “There isn’t a keyboard on this. We had to optimize it for controller and touch all the way through the UE, all the way through jumping into your games. So Windows is actually built to run on a handheld and on this form factor and on something that is built especially for a gaming.”
Some early discourse around the Xbox handhelds is questioning who exactly the products are meant for, seeing as Asus is first and foremost focused on PC-handheld devices, and there are skeptics who think the ROG Xbox Ally was going to be little more than an existing Asus product with an Xbox button and branding.
While not an internally made product, Bond insists it is Xbox through and through — whether you’re a more causal gamer and want an Ally, or a hardcore gamer who is eyeing an Ally X.
“We want to make sure that people have a choice,” Bond says. “We want to make sure there’s an option for the power players who want the latest innovations, that want to push the edge of what’s possible, the most demanding players. And then, if someone is looking for PC gaming on the go, they’re a casual gamer, they’re a gaming enthusiast, then there’s Xbox Allys for them. Giving multiple choices for people, so we can actually meet people where they are.”
The announcement of the ROG Xbox Allys and Xbox’s partnership with Asus also sparked some confusion over whether Xbox was out of the in-house-made console game. Bond confirms the Xbox team is still hard at work on its next-gen consoles, the follow-ups to the Xbox Series S and X, and there’s even the possibility of internally made handhelds.
“We are 100% looking at making things in the future,” Bond said. “We have our next-gen hardware in development. We’ve been looking at prototyping, designing. We have a partnership we’ve announced with AMD around it, so that is coming. What we saw here was an opportunity to innovate in a new way and to bring gamers another choice, in addition to our next-gen hardware. We are always listening to what players and creators want. When there is demand for innovation, we’re going to build it.”
The launch of the Xbox Ally and Ally X comes on the heels of several price increases at Xbox (for both consoles and its Game Pass subscription service) and just before the holiday season, when Xbox has a slate of much-anticipated AAA game launches still to come, including “Call of Duty: Black Ops 7” and “Outer Worlds 2.” Bond notes this frenzy of releases and business updates are “the start of a new pace the team is executing.”
“There’s a ton more innovation to come, including things like further optimizing the experience here, scaling out the handheld compatibility program, offering more benefits and improvements to the experience and other features and adds that we’re going to give to people and more choices and more games,” Bond says.
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