The slow drip of information about the long-awaited Asus ROG Xbox Ally and Ally X handheld gaming PCs is eroding my wits. For Gamescom 2025, the droplet is Oct. 16 as the official availability date, confirming the rumors. There have been leaks regarding the price, with the latest scuttlebutt placing them at $550 and $900, respectively. Asus says that info, plus preorder dates, “will follow in the coming weeks.” So, more drips coming within a month, I guess.
We do get news about some features, though. Notably, Asus and Microsoft will launch a Handheld Compatibility Program along with the devices. Just as Valve has badges for “Great on Deck” and “Playable” for its Steam Deck device, games will be labeled “Handheld Optimized” or “Mostly Compatible.”
Watch this: Xbox ROG Ally, the Xbox Handheld, Is Real and I Played It
And per the descriptions, they sound nearly identical to the Deck’s: It’s Optimized if the input, screen elements and rendering are appropriate for the handheld without changing settings, and Mostly Compatible means playable with tweaks. There will also be a “Windows Performance Fit” metric — I don’t know how they’ll be classifying that yet, but one should probably be “dumpster fire.” The labels are based on testing and adjusting by the devs and Microsoft. Asus says thousands of PC titles have been tested (or will have been by launch).
One potential performance perk is advanced shader delivery: The shaders are preloaded during download rather than on game launch. It’s possible on the Ally because, unlike Windows, there’s only a single GPU, screen and software configuration to worry about for each game. That should speed launch times, and Asus claims it also reduces the impact on the battery when you launch a game. It does require developer support, so there’s no guarantee it’ll be available in a particular game.
Two features that rely on AI are slated for early 2026. Automatic Super Resolution (AMD’s upscaling technology) and automatic best-clip gameplay capture. But the features use the NPU, which is only in the Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme, the processor in the Ally X. So there’ll be notable software differences between the two devices. Since Auto SR upscales from lower-than-screen-resolution textures, it can theoretically widen the performance gap beyond just raw processing speed, as well.
