After reports that Microsoft is “sidelining” its own first-party developed handheld, the new Xbox Showcase revealed two new mobile devices – Xbox Ally and Xbox Ally X. These machines are hardware collaborations with Asus, bringing Xbox hardware design ideas to the table in combination with a revamped version of Windows that puts gaming first. There are profound, welcome changes here – but one big question needs to be addressed. Is this the first new Microsoft offering no backwards compatibility with the Xbox digital library? Is this an Xbox that doesn’t play Xbox console games? If so, this is a bump in the road in Microsoft’s journey forward – and must be addressed.
First up, let’s examine system specifications on the new devices. From a Digital Foundry perspective, the most interesting offering is the Xbox Ally X, which is effectively an evolution on the device that I’d rank as the current best PC handheld – the Asus ROG Ally X. The form factor gets larger, the Xbox handles, impulse triggers and Xbox button are added and the AMD Z1 Extreme processor is swapped out for its revised Z2E, based on the most recent Strix Point architecture. 24GB of RAM is maintained from ROG Ally X to Xbox Ally X, but with a speed bump to 8000MT/s. A generous 80Wh battery completes the package.
It’s interesting to note that Microsoft and Asus have opted for silicon that retains the NPU (neural processing unit) from the original Strix Point design, when Z2 Extreme variants without the NPU active are specified. It’ll be interesting to see what Microsoft does here, but a port of its AutoSR super resolution feature – which we’ve looked at in the past – would be an obvious technology to port. Frame generation at the expense of further latency would also be viable.
Next up, there’s the Xbox Ally, with a similar shell (no impulse triggers or USB4, however, plus a pared-back MicroSD slot) but substantially downgraded specifications. The Z2A processor is – in all likelihood – a re-spin of the Aerith chip at the heart of the Steam Deck. It reportedly has the ability to hit 20W over Deck’s 15W and has compatibility with faster 8533MT/s memory, but on the latter point at least, only 6400MT/s memory is in place. Total system memory is a pared back 16GB LPDDR5X. Bearing in mind how many triple-A titles are struggling on Steam Deck with similar specs, I’m having trouble reconciling this device with Microsoft’s claims that it’ll run triple-A games. I think that putting out this hardware is a big mistake, but I’d love to be proven wrong.