The third-party Xbox handhelds have been revealed to be the ASUS ROG Xbox Ally and its X variant, with the console’s UI helping reduce system overhead. Unfortunately, the Taiwanese hardware brand did not include Malaysia in the list of companies where the devices will be available in. But it’s not all bad news to owners of existing Windows 11 handheld PCs, according to Microsoft.
In a statement to The Verge, Roanne Sones, corporate VP of Gaming Devices and Ecosystems at Xbox, says that you don’t necessarily need the new device to make use of the Xbox UI. More specifically, once the ROG Xbox Ally devices have been shipped, “our next focus will be updating the in-market ROG Ally and the ROG Ally X”. Once that is done, “similar full-screen Xbox experiences will be rolling out to other Windows handhelds, starting next year”.
While there’s no concrete timeline for the Xbox UI rollout, this would still be good news for those who own a Windows handheld PC. It has previously been shown that, all else being equal, the SteamOS provided better performance over Windows 11 simply due to the number of background tasks in the latter. If the UI implementation can truly suppress said background tasks, then perhaps Windows handhelds will be more comparable to SteamOS ones in the future.
Of course, “in the future” being the operative phrase here. Things will happen sooner if you have the ASUS ROG Ally or Ally X, for both getting the Xbox UI as well as getting better SteamOS support. For others, like the first Lenovo Legion Go, or the Zotac Gaming Zone, your wait will probably be a bit longer and less certain.
(Source: The Verge)
