When the ASUS ROG Xbox Ally X finally made its debut, a good many gamers sighed at the RM4,299 price tag attached to it. While it’s not the most expensive gaming handheld available in Malaysia (looking at you, Lenovo), it’s still a pretty penny to pay, and folks want to know why. As per Sarah Bond, Xbox President: Blame ASUS.
In an interview with Variety, Bond said that the reason for the Xbox Ally X’s was priced the way it is was a decision made by its partner, and by the features that it comes with. “We looked at, how do we create multiple options for people? And it really was Asus, because this is their hardware,” Bond said. “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.”
Bond points out in the interview that Xbox’s priorities are slightly different than ASUS. “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.”
At that price point, and to be fair, the Xbox Ally X isn’t a slouch: it is equipped with the Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme SoC, 24GB LPDDR5X RAM, 1TB of PCIe 4.0 storage, one USB4 port and USB-C 3.2 Gen2 port, and an 80Wh battery to keep it humming for a handful of hours. The display is still the same as the original Ally and non-Xbox Ally X, which is 7-inches, plus the same Full HD resolution and 120Hz refresh rate. It also has a microSD card slot at the top, allowing gamers to expand their storage when they run out of space on the internal SSD.
On the software side, the Xbox Ally X runs with the Xbox app out of the box, replacing the usual Windows OS that previous generations of the Ally handhelds would boot up to. Both ASUS and Xbox claim that the overlay frees up 2GB worth of memory, which is a fair bit, especially when a system doesn’t have alot of memory to go around, especially when the system is running on an APU.
A review for the Xbox Ally X is underway, so keep an eye out on the landing page.
(Source: Variety)
