This is a joke right? (Xbox ROG Ally)

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.
  
  They thinned the os, ive just watched llt video, the appear to have debloated some of it
  
  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.
  
  Funny how this is exactly the opposite of what they're doing, but sure, keep on raging.

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.

Players on either device will be able to tap into Gaming Copilot ...
...yeah

"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
  
  and copilot on a cheap handheld that cannot do anything except record you 24/7 and send it off to MS servers?
- "Relive past game moments with recall" "Totally not going to be dropped in 3 years"

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.
  
  I appreciate the info and analysis!
  The reason I have no idea what the pricing will be... is that well, GPU prices are nonsense that stick nowhere near MSRP, we got tariffs, we got all game prices getting jacked up, we got massive layoffs at MSFT, they are hurting for money...
  And unless this handheld significantly outperforms other existing handhelds... I just don't think many would buy it at basically any price...
  But I also think MSFT is delusional about that, and I don't think they have the depth of coin in their pockets to try to do a loss leader approach, and I think they're more likely to just price it the same way cars and houses and rent are ludicrously overpriced, a price based more on 'we need to pay our debts' than on 'how do we have a sensible long term strategy in this market'.
  
  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
  
  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.
- I'm so hoping Microsoft eats some of the cost of this and makes it a reasonable price. Think of the awesomeness of $600-700 handheld console that can be much more easily modded than the switch 2.
  
  I would love for that to be the case as well... but it wouldn't make any sense for MSFT to do the first part, and I strongly suspect they do not have the finances to do the second part.

Honestly
As compared to consoles? Windows is pretty free.
- Other than the Windows tax, ads, bloatware, constant intrusive up-sell attempts…
  
  Again
  COMPARED TO CONSOLES? That's basically paradise.
  Modern, unhacked and unmodded Consoles are:
  Completely locked down, not only do they not let you install applications not approved by the manufacturer, in reality you can ONLY buy them from the manufacturer and you pay a hefty tax for that "privilege".
  Feeding you ads and upsell attempts whenever you turn them on, as the UI has basically been redesigned to try to sell you more shit first and make getting to your actual games take a few extra steps
  Any undesired feature in a console's OS is something you just have to accept and move on. Powerusers killing Windows bloat with third party tools is a time-honoured tradition that goes back to Windows 3.11
  I'm not saying Windows is good.
  I'm saying that for someone coming from a PlayStation or a traditional XBoXSeXxxx (I love making jokes out of this name), this whitelabelled ROG Ally machine would feel like finally being able to breathe. Just for the fact that you can use more than one storefront and install applications from wherever you want.
  Let me put it this way:
  Linux is an anarchist commune. True freedom.
  Windows is an American Style Capitalist Republic. Freedom*********** with a thousand asterisks more. BUT for someone coming from the North Korea that is playing on consoles (or using an iOS mobile device or...), it DOES feel like finally breathing free.
- Honey I am the Linux mafia. I've spent the past 15 years pushing Linux on my circle of gay nerd friends
  And it even stuck with 3 of them.

Compared to Xbox OS, Windows is very free.
- Corporate needs you to compare these OSes
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_system_software
- 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.

It the Zune for gaming.
- I mean, the Zune is fucking amazing.
  
  explain
  
  FM radio when you wanted it, big color screen that you could watch actual videos on at a solid playback that you could do video out to a TV with. WiFi song sharing. Great playback and no fingerprints in my semitransparent case that glows.
  Zune was amazing.

ROFL More like chains of Microsoft!

I saw that it's a trimmed down version of windows so I'm interested in giving it a chance. Who knows, maybe we will be able to install said trimmed down version on regular hardware which would be interesting.
- You can always use a debloat script to fix a lot of issues. Nothing will help with Windows broken, ancient architecture, but the scripts do help.

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 like to have other apps like a browser easily accessible with proper window management. And most of my games are non-Steam games which allow me to easily swap between desktop and gamepad bindings easily to alt tab out.
  And I've found that running KDE Plasma Wayland has no visible performance impact either. No idea why they use X11 in SteamOS.
  
  Remote play for whatever reason works far better in desktop mode
- Can't you map Alt-Tab to one of the back buttons? Or does that not work in desktop mode?
  EDIT: Or if that doesn't work through steam then is there gamepad software in KDE or the Software Centre that lets the desktop map gamepad buttons?
  
  That works. I'm just lazy and don't want to have to do it for every game.
  
  I've had mixed results doing this. Not really sure why
- I guess you could remap them in desktop mode? I haven't tried but it should be possible.
  
  No, you cannot change the mapping of the Steam and ... buttons. They are only available to the Steam client. You cannot remap the Steam+other button combinations either.
  Funnily enough when no game is running the Steam button focuses the Steam window. But that functionality is gone as soon as a game is running. Really frustrating.

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.

- penny arcade? Wow, are they even still around? I havent seen anyone talk about or reference them for..god.. 10 years?
  
  It's still around, but it hasn't been funny for a long-ass time.
  
  Penny Arcade Expo is one of the biggest gaming conventions in America (and Aus) so I'd say yeah. I think they still make the comic too.

🧐
Are they about to do some kind of shitty silk song gamepass exclusive??

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.
- People who want to play games that only work on Windows but don't want to deal with Windows' KBM interface or its' background activity shitfuckery.

That's a typo, it's supposed to be an R in the middle there, not an F

Yes it is a joke

That form factor has me interested. Wonder if I can get something like that for the deck
- Just install Bazzite on it.
  
  Then buy the rog ally.
  
  How is Bazzite supposed to change the form factor...?

Oh, Paul Marketing, you crazy fellow.

Shouldn't it be "Freedom From” ?

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.
- You're right on other fronts, but this is more like the classic one-upsmanship of basic competition. The loser srops trying to innovate on their own and tries to immitate the winner, rarely successfully.
  Elon and his cyberfuck are a better example of what you're describing.