Leaked pricing suggests the ROG Xbox Ally X might be the most expensive Xbox console yet, which probably isn't the award Microsoft is aiming for
Microsoft may have announced the ROG Xbox Ally range as "an Xbox you can hold in your hands", but it looks like gamers may have to pay a tidy sum for the privilege. Spanish gaming website 3DJuegos spotted what look like leaked listings for both the ROG Xbox Ally and the ROG Xbox Ally X on the Asus store for €599 and €899 respectively.
Translated directly into freedom dollars, that would make the ROG Xbox Ally roughly $700, and the X variant an eye-watering $1,050. Though it's likely not to be a 1-1 exchange. In fact, Europe often gets the worst end of the stick and the final dollar price might be a fair bit lower.
The pricing has since been removed, but should it prove to be correct it would make the ROG Xbox Ally X the most expensive official Xbox console ever by a considerable margin, a perhaps unenviable title. Still, it's not like regular Asus ROG Ally X is particularly cheap, and this Xbox version has the Strix Point-based AMD Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme to play with.
Yep, it's specced out to be a very powerful handheld APU, and is unlikely to be released in anything but the most premium of devices. The rest of the components are fairly impressive as well, like the 120 Hz 1080p 7-inch screen and the 24 GB of LPDDR5X-8000 RAM—although $1,050 still feels like a lot to ask for any handheld gaming PC... err, I mean console, even a juiced-up one.
And as for the regular ROG Xbox Ally? Well, the $700 pricing seems a lot more sensible, but then you're only getting the AMD Ryzen Z2 A in the driving seat, an APU that still makes use of relatively-ancient RDNA 2 GPU cores. Oh, and you only get eight of them, which seems downright miserly for this sort of cash. It's practically a Steam Deck APU, and those go for under $400.
This is a handheld chip that, on paper, has failed to excite any of us in the PC Gamer office, even less so when you cram it into a $700 Windows 11 handheld with an Xbox GUI strapped on top of it.
As for release dates for both, though? We're still not sure. The initial reveal gave us the vague indication of "holiday 2025", but I've already been on my holiday and it's not out yet. Just kidding—it's on for a winter release as things stand, although that could all be subject to change.
Just like this pricing, if I'm honest. These sort of leaks happen all the time in the tech industry, and I'd say a good 50%+ of the time they end up being placeholder prices with little bearing on what the products release for in the end.
Again, though, I wasn't expecting either of these handhelds to be cheap. Something deep in my bones thinks this pricing won't be too far off, so if you want the glorious handheld gaming PC experience but Xbox-ified, I'd say you should probably start saving now. It might be sunny for many of us at the moment, but winter is never that far away...