You must log in or register to comment.
“Freedom of Windows” “Power of Xbox” Good stuff. We should make some more. “From a brand you can trust” "Pro gamers choose … " “Powered by Copilot and Game pass”
Well gamepass on a cheap handheld doesn’t sound so bad tbh
It the Zune for gaming.
The one thing I took away from it was that the Xbox-button acts as alt tab. I WANT THE SAME FROM MY STEAM DECK IN DESKTOP MODE!
But in Desktop mode the Steam button does absolutely nothing while a game is running.
Why do you use desktop mode for a game?
I guess you could remap them in desktop mode? I haven’t tried but it should be possible.
Players on either device will be able to tap into Gaming Copilot …
…yeah
That form factor has me interested. Wonder if I can get something like that for the deck
Just install Bazzite on it.
This got me thinking that Valve is the best competitor to Xbox. Instead of getting to release some walled garden, single store handheld they have to open it up to other stores because otherwise people would just buy a SteamDeck.
But everyone who cares about handheld gaming already has a steam deck and this is going to be more expensive so I don’t see the point anyway.
Moar power! More more more more!!!
boots up an indie roguelite
I guess they are trying to get people already paying for game pass to buy it, because you can play everything on it. But then people won’t be able to cancel their subscription or they’ll have a very expensive paperweight without games.
From what I saw, it’s more or less just a new app that starts when windows boots up. Plus some improvements like “the controller now works in UAC prompts” - which tells me that they didn’t really learn anything.
it’s more or less just a new app
You know a reason why Linux with Steam runs just way better than win? Because they use game scope, therefore not needing to render and run all of the desktop.
So what does Microsoft do? They release a new app on top of the already bloated desktop.
Gamescope is a compositor. It has many useful gaming features, but it doesn’t have a major performance advantage over desktops like Gnome, KDE, or tilers.
The performance advantage comes from the fact that there isn’t a full-fat desktop running concurrently with the game. You’re booting directly into Steam.
Funny how this is exactly the opposite of what they’re doing, but sure, keep on raging.
They thinned the os, ive just watched llt video, the appear to have debloated some of it
They thinned the os
X Doubt
Well according to information out there they did get permition to tweak Windows to make it much more sutible for gaming handhelds.
that sucks, make windows lightweight for all of us.
Apparently it will come to all desktops.
Yeah apparently the desktop doesn’t even load when this launcher is used. But it’s still an option.
I don’t think not loading the desktop will really help much. Maybe it will free up a few hundred MB of memory.
ROFL More like chains of Microsoft!
Oh dear god it is apparently serious.
https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2025/06/08/xbox-handheld-rog-ally-x-games-showcase/
Any guesses for MSRP?
$1200 for the X variant?
$600?
Will MSFT bet the farm, take the upfront loss on the unit, and try to convince everyone this is both their next handheld and their next mainline living room console at the same time?
Nah. The ROG Ally X they already make with windows 11 and 1 TB is $800+tax. The ROG Ally that came before it was $700 and currently sells for like $400 or so.
The 2TB Rog Ally X is about $1k + tax. I honestly doubt they can get people to pay more than that for a handheld, regardless of the Z2 chip. They are having trouble selling the ones they currently make. Add to this that Lenovo just launched the steam os variant of their newest handheld and it’s significantly cheaper.
To be fair, the Legion S uses the Z2 Go chip, which is basically same benchmarks as a Z1 Extreme. If this uses the Z2, that’s gonna be faster.
Who the fuck announces a product on a Sunday? They must not have much hope this will sell…
Today was the xbox showcase
Right? Xbox showcase is always on a Sunday. Even when E3 was a thing.
Don’t worry it’s going to launch with silksong. Don’t really know what’s the point of releasing a game along a cross-platform console but I guess the publicity is good.
1200? They never expected to make a profit but they’re in too deep to turn back now.
I genuinely have no idea what either a cost-to-produce estimate would be, or what the fuck MSFT thinks their strategy is here.
I am flummoxed.
It basically uses the next version of the same kind of chips that are in the ROG Ally and ROG Ally X… no one has any idea what the actual performance of this thing will be, I’m seeing barely educated guess at … roughly 25% more powerful, basically?
All the other specs seem identical or near identical.
Then you’ve also got the insane tariff situation and MSFT being both based in the US, and I think they still have their largest share of Xbox users in the US, but I’m not sure.
I guess I also wonder if they will pretend this thing is a console when it comes to software mods, and just lock down the bootloader and brick itself if you try to install linux on it.
Because… if you can just flash like Bazzite or SteamOS onto it… you get a roughly 15% game performance boost.
And then at that point MSFT will just have basically developed a product that non morons will use effectively as a competitor’s platform, mainly in the Steam gaming ecosystem… not MSFTs.
I have a lot of questions about all of this.
We’ve known for a bit they were going to do this.
I’m honestly surprised they didn’t do it sooner. They already had half of the work done for Xbox. Should have been relatively easy to start with just the interface for all PCs and then iterate from there.
Compared to Xbox OS, Windows is very free.
yea the full sentence makes more sense. “freedom of windows, power of xbox” implies it’s trying to compare to previous xbox experience, not other OS.
Although still, never had a console, but I thought a gaming PC is usually more powerful than xbox though. Or I could get mad overthinking of what do they meam by power, what do they mean by freedom. This is why I often dont like marketing speak & just disregard it.
Corporate needs you to compare these OSes
Who is this for?
Everyone that is scared they can’t play the most popular online games on their handheld. So theoretically a massive demographic according to research (most pc gamers play older live service titles) done but whether they would want a gaming handheld is a different question.
There’s apparently a chunk of gamers who can’t leave Windows because of GamePass. However, I don’t know whether it’s a significant portion.
🧐
Are they about to do some kind of shitty silk song gamepass exclusive??
Yes it is a joke
They are trying to make this an ideology too?
For those who need an explanation; Its always The same:
- you habe 2 products (EG. Communism and capitalism, Intel vs. AMD, nvidia vs AMD, Linux vs Windows)
- one of these is just objectively better then The other, so it starts winning over people
- The leader of the just objectively worse thing (EG Trump, Intel, Microsoft, nvidia (kinda) Start just yelling the same old „Dont thread on me you Woke DEI communists with your culture war” effectively turning the Objektive comparison into a simple culture war about ideology, effectively turning all those insecure fucks into deaf and blind wutbürgers.
And that’s what effectively happening right now. The pigeon has gotten the bad cards, so they just shit on the table and eat the pawns.
I understand completely. When you are done with that pawn, please get some cleaning materials and remove the shit from the table.
