From The Verge: Today, Microsoft and Asus are officially opening preorders for the ROG Xbox Ally and ROG Xbox Ally X at $599 and $999 respectively in the US. They’re $799 CAD and $1299 CAD in Canada, €599 and €899 in Europe, £499 and £799 in the UK, and $799 AUD and $1599 AUD in Australia. They both ship October 16th.
(In the United States, the Xbox Ally X will be exclusive to Best Buy, the Asus Shop, and Microsoft; the Xbox Ally is going wider at Amazon, Best Buy, Walmart, Microsoft, the Asus Shop, and Ant Online.)
There’s a few different ways to look at those prices. If you’re used to console pricing, Microsoft’s first Xbox handhelds are not cheap! Even the vanilla white Xbox Ally costs $150 more than a Switch 2, which was itself criticized for price, and it costs $100 more than a far more powerful Xbox Series X did at launch in the US, Microsoft’s new Xbox price hike notwithstanding. In Europe and the UK, the weaker of the two Allys costs the same as an Xbox Series X.
But you can’t play that Xbox in a passenger seat. And if you’re a PC gamer, or want to be, things look a bit rosier. These “Xbox” handhelds will be the first with a new build of Windows that hides the desktop and Explorer shell, frees up gobs of memory for your games, and (hopefully) lets you navigate solely by controller.
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