Between the original Xbox leak during their purchase of Blizzard and Nintendo springing various leaks leading up to the reveal of the Switch 2, this has been a strange time. And it’s only getting stranger. So, Video Cardz has just given us the first look at the upcoming Xbox handheld being released, apparently as a model of the ASUS ROG Ally 2. And it looks pretty cool.
we should obviously ignore those smudges, look at that xbox button
These leaks come to the gaming world courtesy of an FCC listing. The white model appears to be a straight-up second model of the ROG Ally. Though it could very well be a white version of the Xbox handheld. The black model is the same, with one very important exception. That Xbox button visibly sitting off to the left. Known as “Project Kennan”, the handheld has been in the works for some time now.
However, the question is, does Xbox have its own OS similar to SteamOS? Or is it just going to run on Windows? (Please don’t run on Windows.) I know what I said earlier, but how much of a hurry was this person in to get those pictures out? No quick wipe-down at all. I don’t own a ROG Ally, so I don’t know how prone to smudging and fingerprints it is, but hopefully, what we see in the pictures is just down to abnormally heavy handling in production.
How do you get people willing to throw down the cash for this after increasing the price of your consoles, though? This is the issue Microsoft will run into. You’ve pushed a “This is an Xbox” campaign for almost every device known to man. And now you want people to pivot to a likely very expensive handheld. Most people already have something that will allow them to play your games. Which then makes it hard to justify asking them to pay premium prices for this. What’s the separator? I think Microsoft has an uphill battle with this one. I know I won’t be fitting this one into my life.
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